


Not Another Soul Could Love You Like My Rotten Bones Do

by essieincinci



Series: No Finer Mess To Be Found [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tattoos, Anxiety, Belly Kink, Chubby Kink, Depression, Feeding Kink, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Panic Attacks, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 04:56:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2137800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/essieincinci/pseuds/essieincinci
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If we’re both going to the convention, I can probably start your back piece if you still want it.” </p><p>Part Three of Chubby Punk Bucky / Tiny Tattoo Artist Steve. With added road trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Another Soul Could Love You Like My Rotten Bones Do

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody](http://alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody.tumblr.com/) and [vanessadoes](http://vanessadoes.tumblr.com/) for cheerleading and hold-holding and a fabulous beta job. This story wouldn't even exist if not for them, and it certainly wouldn't be readable. 
> 
> Title from Spirit of Jazz by The Gaslight Anthem

Bucky wears his pants purposefully on the tight side, skinny jeans clinging to his thighs, his stomach spilling just over the waistband, the button straining sometimes after a big dinner and a second piece of apple pie. He usually throws on a t-shirt, maybe a button-up or a hoodie if it’s chilly. It’s a long way from the days of starched and pressed uniforms, seventy pages of code and regulations to memorize, and damn if that isn’t liberating.

He'll add a belt, sometimes, but he doesn’t need any help in the keeping his pants up department.

Suspenders are more Coulson’s thing, because while he usually chooses to dress more formally, Coulson’s an old school punk. He likes the familiarity of the trappings from back in the day. He likes the work pants/undershirt/suspenders combination that he remembers his uncles still sporting, their sailor tattoos faded and a source of sheepish pride they promised to tell him all about when he was older.

But for Halloween this year, Stark is throwing a costume party at his house that Steve is incredibly excited about. Steve always loved Halloween as a kid.

“You get to be anything you want, Bucky! Anything! I was a different thing every single year,” he says proudly.

Bucky fucking hates Halloween, but fine, whatever, he’ll go, _fine._ Especially since the party also serves to welcome Peggy and Maria back from their honeymoon. They went to some vintage style convention in Vegas. Peggy had done a ton of networking, combined their honeymoon with her working vacation. Since Maria was excited just to lay by the pool, it worked for them. She even brought a wallet with a pinup-style mermaid on its back for Bucky, full of business cards from vendors interested in his wares.

“How can you hate Halloween, Bucky?” Peggy asks him. She’s dressed as Maria, and Maria’s dressed as Peggy, and damn if they’re not both super hot and enjoying the hell out of it with each other.

“How can you not?” Being a chubby kid in public school and all the fat-kid-and-candy jokes made it a day he usually tried to skip school. Even though that meant he wasn’t allowed to go trick-or-treating. It was always too cold or rainy or both to go trick-or-treating without a coat, so any costume was automatically ruined anyway. It was a trade-off Bucky was absolutely fine with making.

Tonight he’s dressed as At-The-Club-Coulson because it was technically enough of a costume that Steve let him get away with it, but also it was comfortable enough that he wouldn’t spend the whole night pissed off.

And it was cheap, which was important less because of financial considerations, but more out of protest.

Because Halloween is fucking awful.

The first time he changed his opinion from basic indifference to absolute hatred was when he was sixteen and he took his nine-year-old sister shopping for costumes. She could be a sexy nurse or a sexy witch or something sexy yet horribly racist, or they could shop in the boys’ section.

She was nine and she wanted to be a doctor. They had nurse costumes in her size. But no doctors.

She ended up going as a hobo, and he spent the whole night trying to talk with her about how that really wasn’t a lot better, socially speaking, but at least she was dressed.

She just sighed and pulled him down the cobblestone pathway to the Fletchers’ house, where they were giving out full-sized Hershey bars. She wasn’t paying attention to him anyway.

Jasmine Fletcher was dressed as a sexy kitty. She _was_ incredibly sexy, if Bucky ignored the fact that it was _Jasmine_ in that leotard. She didn’t even offer him a candy bar.

While he was wandering down neighborhood streets, house to house with his sister, the rest of the football team was out egging houses. Jackasses. Even though Bucky could prove he wasn’t there, he had witnesses - soccer moms and first graders dressed like lambs and witches and yes, fucking sexy nurses and shit - he still had to be punished with the rest of the team. It builds character or some shit. Fucking wind sprints.

There was the time he and the guys from his unit went to a haunted house and they got arrested. Because no one, including himself, had been smart enough to think through having complete strangers jump out at six guys with combat training who just came back from a fairly stressful op. So maybe that experience can be blamed more on his own general stupidity rather than the day, but his point stands.

(They only broke one guy’s nose, and it wasn’t like the guy hadn’t had his nose broken at least once before. And luckily the cops who responded were vets, too. And they hadn’t been in uniform. And they weren’t completely drunk. So it ended better than it could have.)

Also, and this is an opinion he’s only told Steve and he wants to keep it that way as long as possible. He frowns at Peggy’s pumpkin spice cupcake. He thinks pumpkin spice anything tastes vaguely like dirt.

Bucky scans the room again, smiling when Peggy laughs at his good-natured ranting, waiting for Steve and Clint to finally show. The shop is always busy on Halloween, but Steve closes it down early every year.

“Too many drunks, otherwise,” he says. “Not worth the hassle of trying to convince them they aren't sober enough for a zombie black cat face tattoo. People who are serious will come back in November. Hopefully with a different tat in mind.”

Steve hadn’t let him know what his costume plans were, furtive and secretive and tight-lipped about the whole thing. Even Clint had been in on it, and Bucky couldn’t bribe the secret out of him for the world.

When he finally shows up Bucky sees why. Clint-as-Robin-Hood and Coulson-in-his-suit step through the door first, then Coulson turns, offers his hand and helps Steve down the few steps into the living room.

Steve’s dressed in 40s-style drag, looking sweet as sin and sexy as all fuck.

“Holy. Shit,” Bucky whispers.

Peggy says hello to Steve when he walks up to them, compliments him on his makeup, and then offers to refill their drinks in an excuse to leave them to their mutual costume appreciation.

“You’re gorgeous, babe.”

“Yeah?” Steve reaches out and strokes his pink-tipped fingers down Bucky’s suspenders, his deep voice somehow adding to the ridiculous hotness of the costume.  “You’re not too bad yourself, handsome.”

Bucky’s hands come to rest on Steve’s narrow waist. “Where’d you get the wig?”

“Oh. Peggy.” Steve reaches up and scratches his temple. “But I won’t wear it long, it’s itchy. So are the stockings. I don’t know why you liked those so much. I mean, I’m happy you liked them.” Steve grins at him. “You might want to like them again sometime soon, actually.”

Bucky hadn’t noticed Steve’s stockings. He looks down and pulls the hem of the dress up as Steve models his leg for Bucky, the black silk seam disappearing up under the dress above Steve’s knee.

“You don’t like them?” Bucky reaches down to stroke over them, but thinks better of it, pulls his hand back and settles it on Steve’s waist again. If he starts that now, he won’t stop. Silk stockings are - apparently - kind of a thing for him. “They’re so soft, though.”

Steve shakes his head and Bucky lets the hem of his dress drop back down. “They’re uncomfortable. They pinch. Hey, I got those apple pie cookies to work out finally.”

“Oh yeah? Did you bring them with you?”

“Yeah, Clint and Coulson brought them in for me. They’re over by the drinks.” Steve wraps his hand around Bucky’s suspenders and walks backwards toward the bar, surprisingly coordinated in his little black kitten heels. His knuckles brush against Bucky’s chest and belly on the slide back down, and Steve comes to a stop near the buffet table and shrugs his shoulder in the direction of the cookies without letting go.

Bucky glances toward the middle of the room. The music’s changed to something slow and sweet, with a simple bass line. “Come dance with me.”

Steve laughs. “Don’t be silly, there’s no pit with this music. Not as long as this is still Pepper’s house. She’s punk as hell, but this is still her living room.”

“No, I mean dance. Come dance with me.” Bucky takes Steve’s hands and pulls him toward the middle of the room.

“I’m in heels!”

“Take ‘em off if you need to. I saw you walk just now,” Bucky says. “You’re not getting out of this one, Stevie.”

Steve pulls the shoes off and hands them over to Jane, who takes them and hands them to Peggy for safekeeping as she continues dancing - if you can call that dancing - with Thor.

Bucky holds his arms out in standard waltz position and cocks an eyebrow. “Well? Coming?”

Steve steps in and lets Bucky start them off in a slow, simple pattern around the floor. It’s awkward for a few turns, when both Bucky and Steve are trying to lead.

“I’m pretty versatile, Steve.” Bucky winks. “But as the taller partner as well as the only one who is currently wearing shoes, I’m gonna call dibs on leading.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve acquiesces, and squeezes Bucky’s hand.

“Where’d you learn to waltz?” Bucky asks.

“School. It was the only unit of gym I was allowed to participate in, so I got really good at it. I can also do a mean square dance, if you want to throw some fiddle up there.”

“Shh, Coulson will hear you. You know he’s got that ready to go.”

Steve laughs and steps closer, resting his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “You?”

“School, sister, army.”

“They teach you to waltz in the army?”

“They taught me.” Bucky shrugs, steering Steve into a quick little turn before pulling him back in close. “I did a lot of embassy work. Had to be able to fit in.”

“Wow, I can just imagine you causing all kinds of scandals with diplomats’ wives.” Steve reaches up to straighten his wig again.

“That only happened once, and it was a daughter, not a wife,” Bucky says dryly.

“ _Really_?”

“No.”

Steve smacks him lightly on the chest. “So are you going to let me in on any of your top secret spy stories? Or if you tell me will you have to kill me?”

Bucky swallows. Steve’s a little closer to the truth than he’d ever like him to know. “I, uh, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Okay, Bucky,” Steve says, squeezing his hand again. “Hey. Bet if you dip me, you’d make Stark’s day.”

Bucky smiles, tension broken, and twirls Steve over directly in front of Tony and Pepper and Bruce at the living room bar where he dips him dramatically. Steve, willowy and flexible, bends backward and lets Bucky slowly raise him back up as the song ends. Bucky leads him off the floor with a hand on the small of his back.

“Nice moves, Dancing Queen,” Tony says, toasting them from between Pepper and Bruce.

“Head rush.” Steve blinks, pulling the wig off his head. He hands it over to Pepper, who frowns and hands it to Tony. Tony shrugs and lays it on the bar. 

"You just gonna strip piece by piece in the slowest tease ever or what?" Tony fusses. Pepper shushes him softly. 

Steve’s running his hands along the edges of Bucky’s suspenders again.

"We like these, then?" Bucky asks, snapping the suspenders carefully when Steve backs off to grab a plate and pile cookies and candies onto it.

"We like these a lot." Steve hands the plate to Bucky.  

“You know, any of the spare rooms are yours for the taking,” Bruce says.

“Thanks.”’ Bucky sketches out a perfect salute in Bruce’s direction with one hand, the plate of cookies in the other. “Think we’ll be taking you up on that.”

"Already? You could, I don't know, mingle. Spend some time with your friends or something," Tony pouts.

"Yeah. I guess that's not an unreasonable request," Bucky says. 

Steve frowns, but they end up spending another few hours making their rounds through the party.

Eventually, though, Steve uses the suspenders to pull Bucky around, down the hallway. "Still hate Halloween?"

"Still hate Halloween," Bucky answers, suddenly intent on nothing but getting Steve in that bed. “Coming around on the suspenders, though.” He kicks the door closed behind them, drops the plate on the first flat surface he can find to free up both hands.

“Yeah?” Steve backs Bucky into the bed, unbuttoning his shirt quickly and pushing it off Bucky’s shoulders.

“Yeah.” Bucky sits on the edge of the bed, shirt off. “Want these back up?” He looks up at Steve, hooks his thumbs into the suspenders and pulls them back over his shoulders before Steve can even answer.

“Leave ‘em on. I’ll keep the stockings, if you want.”

“Oh. I want.” Bucky’s shirt ends up in a pile on the floor next to the bed.

Steve turns around and looks back over his shoulder. “Unzip me?”

“Damn, baby, that will never not be sexy,” Bucky whispers, slowly lowering the zipper on Steve’s dress and following it with gentle, wet kisses down his back. He reaches his hands over Steve’s shoulders, pushing the dress down his arms, letting it pool around his skinny hips.

“Make you - oh,” Steve gasps when Bucky slides his thumb across his nipple. “Wish I’d do this more?”

“Mmm, not going to say I don’t like seeing you all dolled up, but it’s not the dress that gets me hard. ‘S’you.”

“That’s a good line,” Steve says, breath coming faster now. He steps out of the dress and Bucky knows he’s pretty far gone, since he just leaves it there on the floor. Steve’s wearing silky little tap pants, and silk stockings held up by a sweet little garter belt. It’s exactly what’s he’d have pictured, if he’d ever pictured Steve in lingerie.

“Not a line,” Bucky says, biting down on Steve’s shoulder again as he unzips his pants, leaves them up but takes himself out. He pulls Steve to sit in his lap. Steve spreads his legs, brackets Bucky’s thick thighs between them and leans back, and Bucky presses his dick between Steve’s back and his belly.

“Gonna fuck me now?” Steve asks.

Bucky sucks a bruise into Steve’s neck where it’s stretched out in front of him. “Yeah. Just like this. Gonna sit you right here on my dick and let you get us both off. Sound good?”

Steve whimpers. “Yes, now, good, do it _now_ , fuck me.”

“Let me get you ready.” Bucky leans to the side, hopes like hell he can reach the bedside table without dislodging Steve.  He reaches in, finds the bottle of lube, and thanks all that’s good in the world for his deviant and extremely well-prepared host.

“Hmm-mm.” Steve shakes his head, lifting himself up. He pulls the tap pants to the side. “Don’t have to.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, harshly. “I gotta get you ready. I’m not going in dry, what -”

“No, I know, I’m not. I’m ready,” Steve says, grabbing for Bucky’s cock and holding it still. “I already, you know, did that part.”

“You already did that part,” Bucky repeats, grabbing Steve’s hips on automatic, his brain going offline for a moment.

“Wanted. Wanted to be ready. Help me out here, Bucky, _now_ ,” Steve whines.

Bucky leans back, holds his dick steady with one hand and lets Steve sink down on him, slowly, relishing the groan that draws from him.

Steve’s careful, sliding so slowly down, and Bucky feels it steal his breath with every inch. When Steve bottoms out, he breathes there for a moment, and Bucky tries hard not to thrust. But Steve’s silky legs are still brushing against his, Steve’s toes pressing into the tops of Bucky’s feet. Everything is slick and hot and smooth against him, and Bucky can’t hold out any longer, wraps his arms around Steve’s chest and lifts.

Steve falls into a rhythm with him, flexing his thighs as Bucky plants his feet on the floor and thrusts. Steve grabs Bucky’s wrists, squeezes in counterpoint, chanting Bucky’s name in little bitten-off gasps.

“This, god, _yes_ , so good, so _good_ , Bucky,”

“Yeah? Gonna come for me,” Bucky growls, lost in the silky slide of everything.

“No,” Steve says sharply, and Bucky freezes.

“What?”

Steve climbs off him.

“What? What’d I do?”

“Oh, no, Bucky, sorry, no.” Steve pushes him back, climbs on top of him and sinks back down on his dick. He kisses his way across Bucky’s neck, apologizing. “No, it’s good, it’s _so good_ , but I couldn’t reach the suspenders.”

True to his word, Steve’s hands are holding on to Bucky’s suspenders now, his knuckles pressing into the softness over the muscles in his chest. Bucky reaches down, moves his pants out of the way and grips Steve’s hips again.

“There, now, better, _yes_ , just like that,” Steve groans again.

“Yeah, babe? Good now?”

“So good, Bucky, yes, _there_ , like that.” Steve’s working himself hard and fast on Bucky’s dick, his hands twisting in the suspenders. “So good, so good, come for me Bucky, come on, come on, now,” Steve gasps, bending forward to bite and pull on Bucky’s nipple ring. That’s all it takes, Bucky’s coming hard with a little shout and squeezing on Steve’s hips, the tap pants soft and silky under his palms.

“God, you’re gorgeous when you come,” Steve says, rubbing his hands over Bucky’s chest, dipping his thumb into his belly button.

“Your turn,” Bucky pants out, reaching down for Steve’s dick.

“Like this,” Steve says, turning Bucky’s hand over and pressing it down, pushing himself into Bucky’s soft stomach. “Yeah, just like that.” Steve ruts against him half a dozen times before Bucky thumbs over the head and Steve comes, thick drops hitting the edge of the suspenders

He collapses onto Bucky’s chest, panting, shoulders heaving.

Bucky wraps him up, kisses the top of his head clumsily. “You good, babe?”

Steve nods, breath slowing. “We now officially own more lingerie than Maria,” he says, kissing Bucky’s chest. “That’s not weird, right?”

***

Bucky’s new neck tattoo - a steampunk style padlock Steve drew for him - is itching something fierce, and Steve keeps slapping his hand away when he reaches up to pat at it. Which takes some pretty serious dexterity, considering Steve’s holding onto their little shop-along basket at the grocery store.

“Oh, _hey_ , Bucky!” comes this chirping voice from the register.

Steve sighs and sags, and the basket almost touches the ground. “Why, _why_ does she have to be here?”

“She works here. Be nice,” Bucky laughs, taking the basket from Steve. He saunters up the the counter to unload the ice cream and Reddi-Whip and cherries on the counter.  “Hi, Jeanie,” he says.

“You got it done!” she chirps again, leaning over the counter and not-so-incidentally displaying her lace-clad cleavage while she gapes wide-eyed at Bucky’s neck.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “he lives with a tattoo artist, so it really caught us all by surprise.” He adds the chocolate sauce and a six-pack of condoms to the counter a little more roughly than necessary.

Steve tries not to hit the store on Sunday nights exactly because Jeanie will be working. She pretty much ignores him, but if Bucky walks in, she drops everything and becomes the most attentive employee the market has ever had.

But he and Bucky had a craving for ice cream, and even Jeanie and her enormous, annoying, ridiculous crush on Bucky wouldn’t stand in the way of his desire to end the night with Bucky licking chocolate sauce off his body.

“Uh, right,” Jeanie says, barely glancing at him. “So, like, did it hurt?” She leans forward some more. Maybe she’ll topple right over.

Bucky smiles, looking at Steve. “Nope. He’s got great hands.”

Steve interjects, “He’s also got ice cream, so …”

Jeanie heaves a sigh. “Right,” and rings them up, clearly resenting Steve making her do her job. He pays while Bucky crams everything into their canvas grocery bag.  

“You’ll be at the art market next week though, right?” she calls.

“Should be, yeah. Last one of the year,” Bucky says as he throws his arm over Steve’s shoulders on their way out the door.

“You know there’s a store on the other end of the block,” Steve mutters when they’re finally out of sight of the store. He imagines Jeanie’s still got her nose pressed against the glass trying to watch Bucky walk home.

“Are you jealous, babe?” Bucky teases.

“I’m not jealous. She’s rude.”

“She’s fine. She reminds me of my sister.”

“Really? Because last I checked your sister acknowledges the fact that you have a boyfriend, and she’s never even met me.”

“Jeanie knows you’re my boyfriend. Everyone knows you’re my boyfriend.”

“She just doesn’t care.”

“It’s hard when you’re new to the city. She’s just lonely.”

“Yeah, and she wants you to come over late at night and make her a lot less lonely,” Steve says, his voice breathy and his eyes wide as he unlocks their door and turns the light on.

Bucky laughs and sets the ice cream and chocolate sauce on the counter. “I’m about to make you a lot less lonely. We going to bother with bowls tonight?”

Steve’s already spreading towels over the bed. “What do you think?”

“ _Nice_.”

***

Bucky and Steve spend Thanksgiving transforming Stark’s club into a soup kitchen. Stark calls it a ‘pay what you can’ drop in center, because he says it’s easier to get funding from the board that way, but it is, in actuality, a free gourmet dinner for anyone who chooses to come.

Bruce and Clint spearhead the menu, though they do have professional chefs and caterers bringing in the majority of the traditional foods. The club’s kitchen isn’t really set up to handle this kind of volume.

Steve’s baking enough cookies for everyone to have four or five. He’s been baking every spare moment for about a week. Before they’re even halfway through the crowd, though, Steve’s flagging.

“Come on, babe. Take a rest, okay?”

“Nah, Buck, look, there’s still so many people.”

“Thor’s going to man the ovens. The dough’s already, and if there’s anything Jane knows it’s accuracy of measurements. These will be the most uniform cookies the world has ever seen.  Come on, come to the office with me and take a nap.”

Steve sags. “Just an hour?”

“Just an hour.” Bucky unlocks the office door and lays himself down on his back on the plush leather sofa.

Steve crawls on top of him and snuggles in. He smells like the chocolate chip cookies he’s been baking when Bucky buries his nose in his hair.

“Just an hour,” Steve mumbles into his chest.

Later, Clint slides up to Bucky at the sink where he’s washing dishes. Clint snaps a towel and helps out. “You know,” he says. “I would have thought you and Steve would prefer to be alone today.”

“Why’s that?” Bucky asks. “Steve’s pretty civic-minded. We did this last year, too.”

“You know,” Clint says, drawing out the words and waggling his eyebrows.

“No, Clint, really. Why would you think that?” Bucky asks, eyes wide and innocent. He doesn’t mind talking about it, especially not with Clint, but he does like to make people say it.

“You know. The food thing.”

“The food thing?” Bucky shakes his head. “The food thing. Yeah, I don’t know. What food thing?”

“Fuck, fine. Be like that,” Clint laughs.

“It’s just a thing, Clint. Just a normal, everyday thing.”

“Every day?”

“Well, no. Not every day. Jesus, could you imagine? I’d be the size of this room.”

“Sounds good,” Steve says, coming up behind Bucky and wrapping his arms around Bucky’s waist, wiggles his narrow fingers into Bucky’s waistband. “Duty change. Clint, Coulson’s asking for you out front.”

“Did you get a plate, Steve?” Bucky asks, wiping his hands on a dry towel and releasing the lever that will drain the sink.

“Yup. Got my fill. You?”

“You know it, babe. Ready to head home?”

“Hmm. Like it here though,” Steve mumbles sleepily into his back, wiggles closer, flexes his fingers into Bucky’s stomach a little more.

“Here in the kitchen, or here in this position?”

“Position.”

“Here’s the thing, though,” Bucky pulls Steve’s hands out of his pants, turns around and wraps Steve up in a hug. “That position can be duplicated in bed. Naked.”

“I’m okay with that,” Steve says.

When Bucky unlocks the door and hurries Steve inside, he’s a little worried Steve had been all talk back at the club. Steve’s still dragging, dark circles under his eyes. The nap did him good, but he’s been running himself ragged all month, with no end in sight. Maybe he should let him rest instead.

But Steve looks up at him from under his lashes, moves in close and wraps his arms around him again. “I’m pretty sure you promised me naked.”

Bucky dips his head, kisses Steve on the cheek, “I did, did I?”

“You sure did. You promised me naked and bed and I think that needs to be happening right now.” Steve tugs on Bucky’s shirt and waits impatiently while Bucky strips for him.

“I can maybe help you out with that, then. Since I did promise and all.”

Bucky sits on the edge of the bed and draws Steve over to him. Steve looks down at him, little half smile playing on his lips. “Can I do you tonight?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, we should definitely do that.” Bucky slides his hands under Steve’s shirt while Steve slips his shoes off. He pushes back on Bucky’s shoulders, but he stops him, unbuttoning Steve’s jeans and sliding them over his hips. He steps out of them carefully, and Bucky picks him up and rolls him onto the bed.

“Hey there.” Bucky grins down at him.

“This is not what I was promised,” Steve says, trying to look stern and failing as he tries to arch up into Bucky’s weight.

“Oh, you want what you were promised, do you?” Bucky raises up on all fours, planting his hands next to Steve’s head and leaning in to nip at his neck.

“I believe we had a deal,” Steve says.

“Did our deal include me sucking you off? Because I think that should happen.”

Steve stacks his hands on Bucky’s head and pushes him down, laughing. “Agreed.”

Bucky licks him all over before slowly sucking him in. Steve tugs on Bucky’s hair, making Bucky groan a little and suck harder. Steve likes it when he uses his tongue, and Bucky’s more than happy to comply.

“Up, up here, come on, you promised,” Steve says, tugging harder.

Bucky flops over, grabs the pillows from where they’ve fallen on the floor to shove one under his hips. Logistics come into play a little more often when Steve fucks him. He folds his arms behind his head, lets Steve be in charge.

Steve kneels between his legs and slicks his fingers, stroking into Bucky slowly. “Fast?”

“Yeah, fast and hard,” Bucky nods, closing his eyes and tipping his head back, biting his lip.

Steve finishes prepping him, slides his fingers out and sliding in quickly, bottoming out while Bucky breathes through the slight burn.

“Look at you,” Steve says, running his hands across Bucky’s stomach, pushing his fingers in a little. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

Bucky huffs out a little laugh, leaves his arms where they are.

Steve stops jiggling his belly long enough to reach down, tug on Bucky’s cock in counterpoint to his thrusts. “Not gonna be much longer,” Steve says. “Come on, give it up for me, come _on_.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut as he comes, moving his hand from behind his head down to his dick, smearing the mess there over Steve’s chest, his ribs, and then pulls Steve down into him, rolling them onto their sides to wait for Steve’s breathing to even out.

“Should clean up,” Steve murmurs.

“Give it a minute,” Bucky says. “We got time.”

***

Bucky sighs and looks around on the floor for the button from his last respectable pair of jeans. It’s time to admit he needs some new clothes. Steve’s been saying it for a few weeks now, and Peggy offered to take him shopping. She does know all the best places, with the best deals and the best days. She could even have some stuff pulled aside for him, if he wants.

But he hates shopping for clothes. He hates shopping for most things, but especially clothing. It’s impossible to find anything in his size anymore. Even when he does, they almost never fit properly, and the ones that do are twice as expensive as they should be. And style? Forget style. Fat guys don’t get style. Fat guys get leftovers.   

Most of his shirts are from shows. He likes the bands, and Steve’s done the designs for most of them anyway. He could get them for free, but he wants to pay. He really wants to support the bands that he likes, even if most of them won’t be around this time next year.

Bonus, Steve likes it when he’s wearing shirts that are too small or worn too thin or both, when his jeans are frayed and gone to holes around the seams. When the button keeps popping off, he sews it back on as often as he can, but eventually the button hole itself gives way and they’re mostly just strings from mid-thigh on down, so he gives up. Not before Steve pins him down and wishes them a fond farewell, but still.

He doesn’t take Steve shopping with him because they’re not allowed in the fitting rooms at the same time anymore. He wasn’t so much embarrassed when the nun caught them making out at the church basement rummage sale last September.

These things happen to him now sometimes.

It was when Steve slowly lowered his legs from around Bucky’s waist and said, “Sorry, Sister Anne-Marie,” smiling and blushing but obviously not at all sorry.

She simply tsked and replied, “Steven Rogers, you haven’t changed a bit. Straighten yourselves out and introduce me to your young man, please.” She crossed her arms and waited, tapping her sneaker-clad foot. Steve just grinned unabashedly and introduced him.

He held out his hand for her to shake it and she looked him dead in the eye and said, “Do I want to touch your hand right now?”

That was when Bucky turned red.

“So you knew the nun,” he says, hurrying along with Steve to the bus stop, where there’s at least a half-wall to block the worst of the wind.

“Uh. Yeah? She taught at my school and I still see her at the church. She’s playing basketball when we walk by sometimes on Saturday mornings.”

Bucky bites his lip ring. “Do you still go to mass?”

“Sometimes?” Steve crosses his arms, hunches in on himself a little in a way that has nothing to do with the weather. Bucky holds out his arm and waits for Steve to decide whether or not to take him up on his offer.

Steve comes closer, burrowing in against Bucky as he continues. “Like, not regularly, obviously. But I stop in about once a week to light a candle and maybe I stick around for a while sometimes."

"Do you go with Jo and Fabi?"

"No, they go to Spanish mass on Friday nights. I like Latin mass best, but I go whenever."

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Steve pulls back to look at Bucky. “Do you want to go with me?”

“No.” Bucky shakes his head.

“Okay.” Steve leans back in against him.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

Steve shrugs. “Why would it?”

“Seems like a big deal to most people.”

Steve steps all the way back for a moment and narrows his eyes. “I’m not like most people, Bucky,” he says dramatically, pouting and putting his hands on his hips.

Bucky laughs. “Nope. You sure aren’t.”

Steve snuggles back in after looking down the street, checking for the bus. “It’s the familiarity of it, I think. It’s comforting. And it was really important to my mom.”

“Sister Mary-Anne - “

“Anne-Marie,” Steve corrects.

“Sister Anne-Marie seemed pretty okay with … this,” Bucky ventures.

“Well, you heard her. It’s not news. I was the founding member of St. Pete’s GSA.” Steve smiles proudly. “I was the _only_ member, but that didn’t look as hot on college applications.”

“I didn’t think you could do that at parochial school.”

“Liberal church. They’re totally the black sheep of the community. I was pretty lucky, actually, because every time they tried to yell at me for pulling another stunt, I could always turn it back around on how I was just following Father Joe’s example.”

“Ah. So you were a shit-starting punk in school, too.”

“Ma used to say I was born to it. That I was six weeks early because I had too many injustices to right.”

“Sounds legit,” Bucky says, standing up from the bench and gathering their bags while the bus pulls up to the curb. “You’d have hated me in school.”

Steve shakes his head. “Not possible.”

Bucky lets him take the window seat and stretches his legs out into the aisle when it’s clear no one else is coming past. “I was a rule-following jock.”

“Ooh, high school fantasy,” Steve laughs. “I didn’t start making out with jocks until college.”

“I’d have made out with you.”

“Oh yeah?”

Bucky considers. “No. But I’d have pined for you from afar.”

“Did you look like you did when you were in the army in school?”

“Not ‘til sophomore year,” Bucky says, standing up as the bus neared their stop. He steadies Steve and follows him off the bus.

Ninth grade was not kind to Bucky. His teenage growth spurt hit his stomach first, and he was just hungry _all the time_. He ate and ate, but he grew out before he grew up, and he was thirteen and looked like a little kid still. A round little kid.

Between freshman and sophomore year, though, his body caught up, stretching out almost overnight. He started to be more careful about what he ate, and he slimmed down and joined the football team. It wasn’t so much that he liked football, it was just one of those things. He liked the camaraderie, though, and he was good enough at it. He hit the weight room, where the defensive line always got to pick the music, something heavy and rhythmic and good for counting sets.

He paid even more attention to his diet, and worked his way into a pretty nice body. He made friends easily, now that he knew how to think a little more before he spoke. He did well in school. He could have done better, the hard-ass teachers riding him about his potential, but he did all right.

He dated a lot. No one seriously, because he didn’t really see what the hype was about. Girls were, whatever, all right. He thought about boys maybe, one in particular but he never got around to doing more than watching him across the cafeteria before the kid moved away. It wasn’t until he was in the military - the guys went into the wrong bar one night on leave in a country where miraculously no one spoke the right dialect - or their cabbie was fucking with them, he was pretty drunk, could have gone either way - and that’s when it clicked for him.

But girls were expected, and girls were easier. Plus, girls were small, and he liked that. He liked how they felt when they’d hug him and he could wrap them up in his arms. He liked how easy it was to throw a proprietary arm around their shoulders at a party, how they just fit right there. He liked how they had little hands to hold and how sometimes they’d let him pick them up a little bit.

They liked how he was a great kisser, how he was gentle, how he didn’t mind taking things slow, and how he didn’t attack their breasts like they might disappear if he didn’t latch onto them _right now_.

He earned a reputation as a lady’s man more by staying quiet in the locker room, a well-timed smirk and shrug doing more for his reputation than hours of his teammates’ bragging. If he popped a boner more from roughhousing with the guys at the party, buzzed on illicit beer, than from working his hands into Mary Elizabeth’s panties, well, that happened. Dicks were weird. It’s not like he didn’t get hard when Mary Elizabeth got all weirdly soft and wet down there.

He and Emmy - she started going by Emmy when she dyed her red hair black and stopped going to Mass - her mom said it was just a phase while her dad had literally stood next to his shotgun when Bucky picked her up for prom - actually lost their virginity to each other that night, cliched as it was, more because neither one of them wanted to go to college still virgins than anything else.

It was … nice.

He was glad she was kind of bossy and wanted to be on top of him and that she moved his hand and held it where she apparently needed it, because otherwise he might still be poking at her, trying to figure out what is what and where girls hide the important parts. They did it a couple more times over the summer, and she kept right on being bossy, so he got better at it. She said he got better at it, anyway. He didn’t get any complaints from anyone else.  

“Probably would have figured out I liked boys a little earlier if you were there, though,” Bucky says.

“Oh. I always knew,” Steve says.

Bucky doubts Steve ever didn’t know what he wanted, who he was, how to get there.

***

Fabiana is bouncing, babbling in her mother’s arms and straining toward Bucky in the lobby. Bucky’s grin lights up the whole room, and Steve watches as he walks over and sweeps her into the air, her screams of delight echoing in the room. Bucky says something to her in Spanish. Steve thinks he hears “ _good girl_ ” and “ _Christmas_.” Steve’s French is good enough that he can get the gist of written Spanish, but Bucky and Josephina speak so quickly that he has no chance of keeping up. They do it on purpose, and he’s told them he’s onto them many times in the past.

They laugh. As if ‘ _idiota_ ’ doesn’t translate.

He’s drawn a couple of pictures of Fabi, had Bucky frame them for Christmas presents, and Bucky had just finished the carvings on the sides of a small bookshelf he built for her over the weekend.

Josephina apologizes, says she’ll be late for work if they don’t leave right now, and takes Fabi gently back from Bucky.

“You’re still trying for shift lead, right?” Bucky asks, holding the door open for her.

“Si. Trying.” She rolls her eyes. “La politica.”

Bucky picks up the bags full of cookies again and follows Steve outside. Steve chooses not to comment on the fact that Bucky’s a little quiet on their walk. It probably has more to do with the cold than with the fact that Bucky really likes kids and Steve still has no idea what to do with Fabiana other than keep small things out of reach and pray she doesn’t start crying.

Steve brings about ten dozen cookies to the Rec Center’s bake sale. Bucky’s roped Sam and Maria into helping direct traffic around the tables, while Steve is helping a group of four or five kids how to decorate cookies.  

Steve goes pale and shakes his head when Bucky asks him to entertain the kids. “I can’t, Bucky, I don’t know what to do with kids!”

“Steve, come on, their mom is trying to sneak the tree in without them seeing it. They didn’t think they were going to be able to afford one this year, so it’s a surprise. She just needs an hour or so to set it up.”

And really, how could Steve say no to that?  Besides, Bucky promised these kids were a calm, quiet, studious lot. They were more interested in beautifying the cookies than eating them. While the other kids were running around, darting between legs and tables alike, these kids are pretty quiet, every so often raising their hands to ask, “Mr Steve? Can I get some more blue?”

Once all the cookies and kids are gone, Sam, Bucky and Maria are breaking down the tables and stacking the chairs along the sides of the room. Steve’s sweeping up. Unfortunately, Jeanie sticks around to help out, too, though she’s a little less enthusiastic since Bucky stuck her on floor duty with Steve instead of on chair duty with him.

“You know, Steve, you could take a page from Bucky’s book.” Jeanie smiles at him. “Maybe try eating every once in a while.”

Steve looks up at her. “I eat.”

Jeanie scoffs. “Yeah, right. Look at you.”

“I eat,” Steve says again, a little more firmly.

“Wish I had your metabolism, then.” She sighs.

“Steve?” Bucky comes back into the room, pulling his shirt back down over his waistband where it had ridden up moving furniture. “You talking about eating?”

“Yeah, I was just saying he should have kept some of those cookies for himself,” Jeanie giggles.

“Oh, we did,” Bucky says, taking the broom from Steve and leaning it against the wall before coming back over to hug him from behind. He drops a sweet kiss on the top of Steve’s head. “We’ve still got a bunch at home.”

Steve tenses and turns out of the hug. “You about ready?”

“Uh, sure. Get your coat, I’ll finish up here?”

Steve walks off quickly, and Bucky looks over at Jeanie. “What was that about?”

Jeanie shrugs. “Maybe he’s tired.”

***

They end up at Stark’s club on Christmas Eve. They don’t really do gifts as a group, but Steve pulls Peggy aside, Bucky and Maria trailing along awkwardly, to give her a box. It’s a box Bucky made, polished reclaimed wood that Steve drew gears and flowers on, but Bucky hasn’t seen what Steve put inside until Peggy opens it.

“Oh, Steve,” she breathes, handing the box to Maria while she pulls him into a tight hug. When she lets him go, she wipes at her eyes with the pads of her fingers, careful of her makeup, and takes the box back from Maria.

“They were Ma’s. I think they were her mom’s before.”

Peggy pulls out a puffy envelope, faded and yellowed around the edges from age.

“Patterns,” Maria whispers in Bucky’s ear.

Bucky looks at her questioningly.

“Sewing patterns. Vintage.”

Bucky nods.

“I’d wanted to give them to you before, but I couldn’t figure out how to present them. Lucky Bucky came along,” Steve says, leaning back into Bucky and tilting his head to kiss Bucky’s neck, right over the padlock tattoo.

***

“No, but why does everyone think he’s the sweet one?” Bucky’s emphatic, pulling Steve closer to him. He’s a little - okay, he’s _very_ drunk, but it’s New Year’s and Steve’s at that point where he’s smiling and sleepy and cuddly and pliant and non-verbal, so he can’t distract anyone from Bucky’s important point.

“He’s not the sweet one! I’m the sweet one! Steve’s meaner than shit!”

Coulson, Pepper, and Maria all laugh, but Clint and Peggy nod sagely.

“He’s not wrong,” Clint says, and Bucky tries to high five him in solidarity, but he ends up tightening his chokehold on Steve and almost spilling his beer.

“Sorry, babe.”

“S’okay,” Steve mutters into Bucky’s chest, then just stays there, curling up a little more and patting Bucky’s stomach.

“Did we tell you about when he staged a mutiny in Music class?” Peggy says, then launches into a story from their shared college days. Steve apparently called out an incompetent TA and took over a Music in Pop Culture class, lead the whole thing and ended up securing a TA position for himself.

“Was nice,” Steve slurs between leaving little kisses on Bucky’s collar bone. “A hundred people had to listen to me tell them they were wrong about music three hours a week.”

***

They have the stupid-ass Valentine’s Day contest again this year and Bucky is no closer to understanding it this year than he was last. Steve is stubbornly insisting that as reigning champions they can repeat, especially because Maria and Peggy are still honeymoon-sweet with each other, Clint and Coulson have never been any competition, and Tony and Bruce are in the middle of collaborating on some kind of industrial metal thing with urban construction equipment.

This is actually his life.  

Bucky knows Steve is a terrible singer. Awful. Cannot carry a tune in a bucket. The only only _only_ time he ever sings is if he’s just the right level of drunk and/or owes Natasha a giant favor, and she hauls him up on stage.

Because not only does he know all the words to REM’s _It’s The End of the World As We Know It_ but he can do it at punk rock speed.

Bucky knows this, because Darcy took great delight in telling him about it. But this is the first time Bucky has the pleasure of experiencing it. And it is a pleasure. He’s not sure whether to be impressed or turned on or in awe or start checking for signs of possession. He’s definitely sure he doesn’t want to know what debt Steve just paid off with Natasha.

They’re even now, and that’s all that matters. It isn’t the best rendition, because Steve and singing - no match.

But it was so good.

And hot.

Steve on stage. All his charisma and charm on display, cheeks flushed from embarrassment and liquor.

He’s supposed to be avoiding Steve so they can repeat as contest winners, but the club is actually pretty busy this year  - word’s finally gotten out about the atmosphere at Stark’s on Valentine’s Day - and Bucky isn’t the only one impressed with Steve’s skills.

Bucky leaves Clint scowling at the pool table and stands at the stage just as Steve’s ready to jump down.

“Bucky!” he hisses. “You can’t be over here, Clint and Coulson haven’t even lost yet!”

"Too bad," Bucky says, reaching up to help Steve off the stage. "We lose!" he yells.

When Steve’s down, laughing and putting up a token protest as Bucky drags him out of the club, he says, “Love you.”  

"Damn right you do."

***

"Hey, Bucky," Natasha calls, teasing tone clear in her voice. "Your girlfriend sure was sad you left so early last night."

"My what now?"

"Oh yeah," Clint chimes in. "That kid who works at the grocery and thinks you're the shit. She was looking for you last night. ‘Bout broke her heart when we told her you'd already left."

Steve shoots him a ' _told you so_ ' look from the bar.

Darcy laughs, pushes a couple of chairs over for them to sit down. "Better watch out, Steve. She's coming for your man."

“So hey, who won?” Bucky asks loudly in an incredibly unsubtle bid to change the subject.

“Peggy and Maria,” Darcy answers.

“Really? Honeymoon over already?”

“Nope, with you two out and Clint and Coulson lasting about three more minutes after you left, it really only took another two hours before I could declare them the winners. It’s a new record,” Darcy says proudly.

***

Bucky’s at the drafting table in the shop while Steve finishes work on a back piece and Clint’s lounging on the sofa with a magazine. He’s paging through seed catalogs and figuring out what to get this year. Steve’s now gaining a reputation for botanical tattoos as well as his more customary steampunk works, so he likes to keep the catalogs at the shop for reference.

Mostly he’s ordering stuff he wants to try to grow for himself. Well, and for Steve. But mostly for himself. Like Hooded Skullcap, because that’s a kickass name. And that thing that looks like naked dudes with their dicks out - those are Tony’s favorites. He wants to give that a shot. Snapdragons look like skulls when they’re done blooming, and the kids at the rec center will get a kick out of that, so he’s ordering double those for sure. Tulips for Peggy and Maria. Natasha likes the classics, orchids and roses. Steve says he doesn’t have a favorite flower, but Bucky thinks of lilies when he thinks of Steve. Wants a lily tattoo on his calf.

Besides, he should probably put something in the small greenhouse he built over the winter.

Clint’s fidgeting with the magazine again, clock-watching and tapping his foot, nervous tension clear in his every movement. Bucky assumes he’s waiting for Coulson to come calm him down, but after the customer pays and takes off and Coulson finally shows up, he doesn’t whisk Clint away at all.

“I wanna tell, Sir, can I tell?” Clint asks.

Coulson nods. “Let me get the others on the phone and you can go ahead.”

“Steve. Steve Steve Steve. Sit. You and Bucky, sit on the couch.”

Bucky sits and waits for Steve to join him, his arm automatically raising to settle around Steve’s shoulders.

“Okay, we were going to wait until next week, but I can’t wait. Sir, you got Stark and Bruce and Pepper on the phone yet?”

“We’re here.” Pepper’s tinny voice comes out of Coulson’s phone. Coulson holds it up so they can all see.

“What’s happening?” Steve asks.

“Sorry we can’t be there, Bucky,” Bruce says. They’re in California for some business thing.

"That’s okay. Uh, unless this is an intervention?"

“No. Your birthday present from us,” Clint carries on, “is that Coulson and I are going to drive you two to the convention in California. Tony’s going to finance it -”

“Within reason! I’m not giving you my Black AmEx or anything!” Tony shouts.

“You don’t have a Black AmEx, Tony,” Steve says.

“I might! You’ll never know now.”

“Hey!” Clint calls. “Happy birthday, dickfuck, we’re taking a roadtrip!”

"Language, Clint."

"But, Sir. They stepped on my moment! They _stomped_ on my moment! My moment is in _pieces_!"

Bucky can’t really process what all is happening. “Wait, for real?”

“Of course for real,” Pepper laughs.

“Thank you,” he replies on autopilot.

“That’s awesome!" Steve grins at Bucky. “

Bucky blinks. “No, yeah. It’s awesome. I’m speechless.”

“You’re welcome!” and “Happy birthday!” come to him from all directions, and the rest of the conversation passes him without him really hearing it.

A little later on, Coulson finds Bucky in the alley. “Are you sure you’re okay, Bucky?”

“What? Oh, yeah. No, I’m touched, really.”

“It was supposed to be a nice gesture, but if you don’t feel up to it, we can always make other arrangements. Tony would be happy to charter a bus if you’d prefer.”

“No, really. I just wasn’t expecting anything. Especially not anything like this.”

“The night Clint and Natasha met you, Clint was in one of the worst states I’ve ever seen him,” Coulson says, leaning back against the brick wall.

Bucky’s used to the way Coulson tends to use Clint to make his points now. “He’s told me he was there, too, but I don’t remember it.”

“Natasha reported it to me. I know that when he heard the noise, he froze. That’s always the only signal I get that he’s about three seconds from losing his shit.”

“Sniper still.” Bucky nods.

“He says he’s always panicked that way. It goes back well before the army. Leftover from childhood.”

Bucky nods again. He’d figured Clint had a story like that, though he’d never asked.

“Steve’s the one who taught me what to look for, actually. We’d been together for a while. I just thought he was more calm than normal, really focused. But we came here to pick Steve up for lunch, and he took one look at Clint and knew. He told me what to do and begged off lunch and I took Clint home.”

“Okay. I know you’re going somewhere with this, Coulson, but damned if I know where. I’m not panicking.”

“Perhaps. Once Clint calmed back down, I handled it poorly. A good Dom needs to be aware of potential triggers and Clint had never told me he had an anxiety disorder. I made the mistake of calling it a disorder to Clint. He didn’t take kindly to the terminology.”

“Kinky,” Bucky mutters.

“No, it wasn’t anything like that.”

“No, I mean the way Steve doesn’t react well to the word _kinky_. I think some asshole. Never mind, sorry. This is your story. Go ahead.”

“Clint yelled at me that it never came up before, and I reacted badly to that, because I had seen him do that before. There may have been trust issues on his side that I was unaware of, and I could have really hurt him.”

“I’m still a little lost here Coulson.”

“Steve means a lot to Clint, and you mean a lot to Steve. To all of us. If this isn’t something you want, tell us. We don’t have to do it. Just because you _can_ deal with something doesn’t mean you should _have_ to.”

“Don’t want to disappoint Clint.”

“Clint will get over it. It’ll disappoint him more if he finds out you went along with something you aren’t comfortable with just for him. He has some issues with that, too.”

“Don’t want to disappoint Steve.”

“I could repeat myself here, but I don’t think I’ll need to.”

***

Steve and Bucky stumble in through the door on Bucky’s birthday, Steve carefully holding on to a cake box, Bucky carefully holding onto Steve, neither of them willing to stop kissing long enough to actually get inside the room.

“You did this on purpose. With your shredded pants,” Steve moans. “And that shirt. Is that even your shirt? It’s tight enough to be my shirt.” Steve tugs Bucky’s shirt up from where it barely met his waistband to begin with. He nips at Bucky’s throat, bites at his soft jawline. “And then the cake, you still taste like chocolate, it’s so good,” Steve’s saying, setting the box down on the bedside table.  

Bucky backs him into the wall, hoisting Steve’s leg up higher, crowding him backward. He grabs Steve’s ass, pulls him closer, and lifts, holding him in place.

“I could fuck you here against the wall,” Bucky says, sucking a hickey into Steve’s neck. “Or you could feed me the rest of that cake.”

“Holy fuck,” Steve breathes.

“It’s my birthday.” Bucky grins at him.

“Happy birthday,” Steve says, pushing Bucky to sit back on the bed. “And you’re going to finish this cake. And then I’m going to suck you off.”

Steve grabs a fork from the kitchen and scurries back over to the bed, where Bucky’s leaning against the wall, clothes off, waiting.

“That. Is gorgeous,” Steve says, stopping at the foot of the bed and letting his eyes roam all over.

“You’re a little ridiculous.” Bucky grins.

“Doesn’t change what I’m seeing,” Steve says. He fills a glass of milk and brings it back over to the bed. He sits cross-legged on the bed next to Bucky and opens the cake box. “This is a lot of cake.”

“Yes it is.”

He drags his finger through the frosting. “It’s pretty rich.”

“Stop teasing.”

Steve holds his finger up to Bucky’s lips. “I don’t think you mean that at all.”

Bucky releases Steve’s finger and watches him pick up the fork, cutting a bite of rich chocolate cake and holding it out to him.

A few bites later, Steve stops, lets Bucky take a few sips of milk. “Feeling all right?”

“Doing good. There more?”

Steve nods. “Take over for a few, though, okay?” He slides the box up the bed and hands the fork over to Bucky and slithers down the bed, rubbing his hands over Bucky’s stomach. He sucks kisses into the skin, watches Bucky lick frosting off the fork.

“Full?” Steve asks.

“Getting there. If you want me to do anything about that,” Bucky raises his eyebrow and glances toward Steve’s dick, “I’m gonna need to stop now.”

“It’s your birthday, what do you want?”

“Kinda want your mouth and a nap.”

“We can absolutely do that,” Steve says, mouthing at Bucky’s hips. “Take a couple more bites first.”

Bucky slices the fork through the cake, scoops up another bite while Steve watches.

“That’s good,” he says, rubbing firm circles on Bucky’s belly. “Another.”

“One more,” Bucky says, taking another bite.

“So hot, Bucky. Can you feel it? Like I can?”

“Yeah. Full.”

“So full,” Steve says, breathing heavy, panting breaths hitting Bucky’s stomach before moving lower, ghosting over his balls.

Steve takes his time, little kitten licks everywhere, getting Bucky nice and wet. Finally Steve closes his lips around the head of Bucky’s cock, sinks down slowly. Bucky can’t help but be thankful he’s too full to do more than take it, wants to thrust up into that warm heat but lays back, lets Steve have his way instead.

It doesn’t take long before he’s tensing up, feeling a tingle in his spine, tapping Steve’s shoulder to warn him. “You gonna let me come on your pretty face tonight, babe? Mess you all up?”

Steve groans, the vibrations travelling down Bucky’s cock and straight to his brain. He pulls off, his hand stroking just right, pulling his orgasm out of him, closing his eyes and letting it hit him on his cheek, his chin, on his lips.

As soon as he’s finished, the last pulse dribbling out from between Steve’s fingers on the head of Bucky’s dick, Steve surges up, kisses Bucky fast and frantic, letting Bucky lick his come off his face. Steve ruts against Bucky’s hip, and Bucky grabs his ass, pulls him tight against him for the few strokes it takes to get Steve off.

Steve’s narrow fingers clench on Bucky’s shoulder, hard, hard enough Bucky might even have a bruise there in the morning, if he looks closely enough. Steve’s not what he’d call loud when he comes, he’s not loud at all, really. He’s just constant noise, little breathy moans and gasps and grunts and instructions, always demanding.

Bucky loves it.

After, Steve clings to him, _finally_ , doesn't roll away or wait warily for Bucky to turn his back. He wiggles into Bucky and presses against him and pulls Bucky’s arm around him. Then he snuffles a couple times, says, “happy birthday, Buck,” and drops off to sleep.

***

Attendance at the Rec Center is really low on Tuesdays. Steve always sleeps in since It's still his day off, and Bucky usually lounges around in bed waiting on him to wake up.

One time Bucky tried to wake Steve up a little early with a blowjob but Steve startled and kicked Bucky in the ribs, hard. Steve had apologized and Bucky apologized. Then, just to be on the safe side, he made Steve talk about his feelings and Steve insisted it was fine, he just didn’t like to be startled awake.

So Bucky had very slowly and very carefully and very explicitly informed him about every movement he was going to make before he fucked him through the mattress.

So now Bucky just waits. Sometimes he reads. Sometimes he thinks about what to build up on the roof. Sometimes he watches Steve sleep, but that’s kind of weird and Steve’s a little funny looking in his sleep, all snoring and drooling and scrawny as hell.

They usually go out for breakfast at one or two in the afternoon, right after Ruby comes on shift. She brings Steve his usual short stack and Bucky orders whatever he’s craving: waffles or a patty melt or coffee and strawberry pie.

"Always keeping me on my toes," Ruby says and swats his arm with the menu as she leaves, tucking her pencil behind her ear or up into her beehive. When she comes back with their drinks, they’ve already separated the paper with the sports page on top for Steve so he can check the box scores while Bucky looks over the arts and leisure section.

The first several times they did this, when it was just a thing they did and not a weekly ritual, Steve tried to be subtle about it, just kind of glancing at the sports page left by the register while he was waiting on his change, running his finger down the columns as quickly as possible. When Bucky caught on that it doesn’t actually take twelve minutes to pay their bill, he used all that stealth observation skill crap he learned and figured out what Steve was up to.

The next week he bought the paper from the little stand outside while Steve was in the restroom and left it beside his plate. Steve turned all blushy and Bucky got a fantastic blowjob later so it became a definite part of their Tuesday thing.

Both of them ignore the news-news part of the paper. They're updated on current events via their friends, who by now between all of them know how to keep everyone else informed without triggering anyone or making Clint have to go to the alley and call Coulson or sending Bucky outside or causing Steve to threaten/promise to run for office again.

Bucky looks up from the entertainment section to see Steve pouring over Grapefruit League updates, wearing his fingerless gloves and beanie hat and thick-framed glasses and he can’t help it; he starts laughing.

"What?" Steve glances up at him, bringing his coffee mug up to take a sip, cradling it in both hands.

"We’ve been sitting here in silence reading the paper over breakfast for twenty minutes and haven’t said a word to each other. Are we fifty?”

Steve smiles. “Wouldn’t be too bad, right? To be doing this when we’re fifty?”

Bucky traps Steve’s foot between his own beneath the booth. “Nah, not too bad, I guess.”

"Eat your pancakes, asshole."

“Aw, baby, don’t be grumpy,” Bucky teases.

“Hey, I’m not the one who just turned one year closer to fifty, am I?”

“No, because you did that eight months ago.” Bucky steals the bacon from Steve’s plate.

"Coulson’s close to fifty," Steve says, "and he's doing pretty well. "

“Fifty was a great decade for me,” Ruby says, refilling Bucky’s coffee. “Went skydiving for the first time, learned how to ride a motorcycle. Great decade.”

***

Steve pushes Bucky around on their bed to lie on his stomach and climbs on top of him. Bucky hears the click of a pen cap and lets his eyes drift closed.

Sometimes Steve lets Bucky see what he draws on him, but mostly not. Bucky’s usually relaxed and a little blissed out by the time Steve’s done and he forgets to ask. It’s one of the most relaxing things they do.

One time Steve was blocked a bit, none of his art coming out of his hand the way it looked in his head. He spent an entire night writing everything Bucky made him feel out on his back in French. Bucky rubbed most of it off in the sweat and sheets afterward, when Steve teased him and took his time.

“If we’re both going to the convention, I can probably start your back piece, if you still want it.” Steve says, dragging the felt pen across Bucky’s back from his hip to the opposite shoulder.

“Of course I still want it, let me up,” Bucky says, and waits for Steve to sit up, slide across to put his weight on one knee before he rolls over. Steve sits back down on his thighs.

“I’ll be able to get it mostly done here, and I can finish it there.”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Bucky says.

Steve caps the pen and leans over to set it on the nightstand, and Bucky braces Steve’s hips in  his hands.  “Gonna miss drawing on you, though,” Steve says with a wry little smile. “I like that.”

“There’s a whole lot more of me to draw on,” Bucky says, gesturing down his body.

“Not for long, if you keep letting me at you.”

“I’ll always let you at me.” Bucky grabs him by the waist, rolls him underneath him. “Don’t have to ink me up just to get at me.”

***

Bucky’s waiting on Steve at the checkout counter, chatting with Jeanie. He forgot dish soap. They always forget dish soap. This is the third trip to the store they’ve made this week specifically for dish soap.

“So I was thinking about maybe getting a cute little cupcake on my shoulder? You know, something in pastels? Jeanie says, rolling up the sleeve of her polo shirt. “Hey, want an Oreo?”

“Sure, yeah,” Bucky says, reaching into the package to take a cookie. He twists it apart, licks the filling off just as Steve comes around the corner, handing the soap to Jeanie for her to scan it in.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky says, crunching down on the cookie. “Jeanie was thinking about adding some ink to her shoulder. What do you think?”

“Fine,” Steve says, thrusting a couple of bills at Jeanie and snatching the handles of their canvas shopping bag away from Bucky and leaving him to take the change.

“Call the shop, Jeanie,” Bucky says, frowning at Steve’s back. “We’ll get you set up.”

Steve’s already well ahead of him by the time Bucky catches up, longer legs eating up the slight distance quickly. “What the hell was that?”

“I could ask you,” Steve mutters.

“Ask me what? What’s going on?”

“Nothing, forget it.”

“No, it’s not nothing. You’re pissed about something, and damned if I know what it is.”

“No, you don’t know what it is, and that’s the problem.” Steve says, opening the security door to their building without waiting for Bucky to follow him in.

“What is your problem?”

“You ate her cookies!” Steve yells.

“Yeah? I mean, as long as that’s not a euphemism?” Bucky tries, hoping to relieve some of this tension.

“Fuck off, Bucky, it better not be a fucking euphemism.” Steve slams their front door, and Bucky catches it before it can crash into the frame. No reason to get the neighbors involved in … whatever this is.

“Steve, you cannot seriously be asking me if I’m fucking Jeanie because she offered me an Oreo.”

“Well, you didn’t have to take it!”

“What the hell, she didn’t make them. It’s not like she works at Nabisco. It was a package of cookies. She was eating them and offered me one. It’s what you do.”

“She’s trying to ...” Steve trails off, waving his hands helplessly. “Seduce you.”

“You are reading way too much into this.”

“You can’t see it?” Steve turns to him, flushed and angry with his hands on his hips. “You can stand there and look me in the eye and tell me you can’t see that she’s after your dick?”

Bucky crosses his arms. “Pretty sure not everyone courts via cookies. That might be exclusive to you.”

“Or there might be a fairly well-fucking-known idiom about hearts and stomachs. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

Bucky sighs. “I just ate a cookie, Steve. I’m not interested. I want _you_ , I love _you_.” Bucky puts his hands on Steve’s shoulders. “Come on. You have to know that.”

“I know that.” Steve sags against him, deflating. “I am aware of the words coming out of my mouth, you know. I trust you. She can’t just go around offering other people’s boyfriends fucking Oreos, okay?” Steve leans into him, his arms coming up around Bucky’s waist.

“Okay. Next time, I’ll decline the offer of cookies. Any offer of cookies. Even if I’m starving to death and wasting away to nothing and there is no other food in sight. I’ll say, ‘No, for the only baked goods to pass these lips must be from my one true love.’ Deal?”

Steve laughs weakly. “You are the worst. Why do I put up with you?”

“My sweet ass.”

“She eats them by biting straight into them. She doesn’t twist them apart. What the fuck is that?”

“She’s clearly evil.” Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands. “You good now?”

Steve nods. “I still don’t like her.”

“I know. But you got nothing to worry about.” He cups Steve’s face in his hands. “You know that, right?”

“I know.”

***

“Steve, are you drawing werewolves?”

“Commission,” Steve mutters.

“You took a commission to draw werewolves? Making out?”

Clint looks up from the scanner at the front of the shop. “Is it for Coulson’s new book?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait, what?” Bucky stands between the two of them, blocking their sightlines. He’s really not sure how there is still this much about these people he doesn’t know. "Coulson writes books now?"

“A while back, Coulson wrote a couple light BDSM urban fantasy novels,” Clint explains. “It was hilarious. He’d come home so mad. He just couldn’t take one more day of heading down to the office cafeteria to overhear his coworkers discussing this stuff, like he didn’t know exactly why it was wrong and dangerous and bad.” Clint’s laughing, clearly lost in the memory. He can barely understand him when he continues,  “He got called a prude so many times, oh my god!”

Steve stops inking, puts the pen down to watch. When it’s clear Clint’s not recovering any time soon, he picks up the story for him. “So Phil wrote something himself. About werewolves, because Clint says they’re sexier than vampires.” Steve looks at Bucky and they both silently shake their heads: Clint was definitely wrong about that one.

“And you do the cover art?” Bucky leans over Steve’s shoulder to look at the progress. Steve nods. “For the kinky sex novels your kinky friend writes.”

“I didn’t read the books, Bucky.” Steve pushes him away. “I just looked at the contract and looked at Coulson and cashed the ridiculously large check.”

“The check for drawing kinky werewolves for the kinky books your kinky friend writes,” Bucky continues, innocently.

“Shut up, Bucky.”

“The kinky friends you never actually realized were kinky.” He laughs.

“Shut up, Bucky.”

“Not even after all the times you walked in on Clint kneeling at Coulson’s feet.”

“Shut up, Bucky!”

Bucky laughs and pulls Steve over to him. “You love me.”

“He’s got you there.” Clint grins.

***

“What's this about, Buck?” Steve looks around at the disaster area that was their kitchen. Pretty much every dish they own is scattered about, there’s flour everywhere, and the acrid scent of burnt sugar is so strong Steve could smell it in the hallway.

“It's nothing,” Bucky mumbles from where he’s sprawled on the sofa, arm over his eyes, covered in a fine dusting of flour.

“It's something,” Steve says, walking over to stand in front of Bucky. He bends his knees and bumps Bucky’s shoulder. “What were you in the mood for? You know I’d be happy to make you anything you want.”

“Didn’t want you to make it,” Bucky mutters, his eyes still hidden behind his forearm.

“Make what?”

Bucky reaches up and pulls Steve to lie on top of him, then waits for Steve to adjust his bony elbows out of the way.

“ _Snickerdoodles_ ,” Bucky hisses, and he says it with such loathing that Steve can’t help but laugh.

“I thought you liked snickerdoodles.”

“I do,” Bucky pouts. “They’re my favorites. They _used to be_ my favorites.”

“And you’re acting like they rose up and kicked your puppy because…”

Bucky kisses Steve’s forehead. “It's our anniversary.”

“...Oh,” Steve whispers into his neck. He sits up suddenly, damn near headbutting Bucky in the chin. “Shit, was I supposed to remember this?”

“No.” Bucky laughs and it makes his belly jiggle underneath Steve. Steve’s hand is drawn there immediately, and he pushes Bucky’s shirt up under his arms. “You made me snickerdoodles first, remember?”

Steve nods.

“So I got it into my head that I could make some for you. Well, for me. For you to give to me. Like I wanted you to then.”

“You wanted to do this with the cookies I made for you then?” Steve’s rubbing circles onto Bucky’s stomach, dipping lower with each pass, giving in and unbuttoning Bucky’s jeans.

“You’re kidding me, right? I wanted to fuck you from the minute I first saw you.”

“Shut up,” Steve scoffs. “You loved me.” His voice is dripping with disbelief.

“I didn’t say I loved you, I said I wanted to fuck you,” Bucky says, lifting his hips so Steve can pull his jeans down his thighs.

“Oh, that’s much better,” Steve says, his voice gone low. “So you wanted to make me cookies to feed to you tonight?”

Bucky nods, watching Steve’s fingers tap along the shaft of his dick.

“But instead, you’re just going to fuck me slow, right?”

Bucky nods again.

“Happy anniversary,” Steve says, climbing off Bucky’s lap and stripping on his way to the bed.

***

Once the street festival season is finally able to start - they’d postponed the first three flea markets of the year due to weather, much to Jeanie's dismay, Clint and Tony are happy to point out - Bucky had a stockpile of all sorts of crap to sell, and Pepper suggested he mark up the prices a little extra to take advantage of people’s willingness to spend money just because they were finally able to leave the house.

"She’s a hell of a businesswoman."

"Among her many, many talents," Tony agrees but Bucky isn't sure he gets it. Tony looks at money as a means to an end. It's a tool, to be used and disregarded as needed, like a screwdriver or hairbrush. Steve’s much the same,  though he's less indiscriminate.  

Bucky spent way too much of his life conscious of how important money is, how hard it is to find it, to keep it, to make it last and stretch as far as possible to realistically place monetary value on his work. It’s why he let Pepper talk him into charging as much as he does for his more pretentious found art crap. If people are willing enough to pay that kind of money for three rusty nails and some ceramic leftovers he scrounged from the Boys and Girls Club, they deserve it. Plus, he donates a large portion back to the Center, so that makes him even more popular among the pretentious collectors and faux hipsters that buy his stuff.

His senior year, he was trying to fall asleep subtly, not really paying attention in the assembly where some army jerks are giving some presentation using fifteen-year-old slang to try to convince them to be all they can be or whatever, when one of the recruiters mentioned money. He was awake then, the exhaustion from pulling an under-the-table all night shift stocking shelves gone.

He’d seen him mom piling and shuffling the bills, deciding how much to pay on what and what can wait another week. He heard her hushed conversations where she tried to get extensions and make arrangements to keep the heat on. The week before, his sister had come tearing home, waving a paper about the fifth grade science camp and his mom got that high-pitched falsely-happy voice she had when Bucky fell and broke his arm that one time and she told him everything was going to be fine.

“Sometimes camps can be … sweetheart, I’m sure it’ll be okay. Let me see the forms,” She smiled.

Bucky sold his video games and closed the savings account he’d started for buying a car, and put it all into his mom’s account. She’d cried and gave it all back to him, so he just paid the utility bill and bought a bunch of groceries instead.

He signed up at the end of the assembly, filing a letter of intent, and on his eighteenth birthday enlisted for real. He shipped out two weeks after graduation, the day after his sister left for science camp.

Bucky’s manning his booth where he’s selling his boxes and baskets and flowers and some vegetables and trying to talk to customers and do the necessary networking. The Center is trying to buy a couple new basketball hoops for one of the vacant lots down the street, so Bucky’s hoping the profits from the sales today will help out with the majority of that.

Jeanie is hanging around trying to talk to him and mostly just getting in the way. She brought a big bag of kettle corn and offered it to Bucky, but he’s been busy with networking. She keeps interjecting awkwardly when he’s trying to make a sale. She’s started the same story over four times now. It’s not that Bucky doesn’t care - he does, just not now.

Steve and Clint are supposed to be meeting. They were going to close the shop early, but Steve had an appointment he couldn’t reschedule in the early afternoon. When they finally show, both with huge milkshakes, Clint slurps from his and says hello to Jeanie while Steve hands his off to Bucky and collapses a little clumsily under the tent in the shade until the spots stop appearing in front of his eyes.

“Steve?” Bucky calls, counting out the wrong change for a customer and waving him off when he tries to give him the extra three dollars back.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s just hot,” Steve pants. “And I may have forgotten to eat today.”

“And yesterday?” Clint asks.

“Maybe.” Steve takes a deep breath. “No, remember I made those muffins?”  

“ _Made_ is not the same as _ate_ , Steve. We have had this discussion before,” Clint spits.

Bucky asks Clint if he can handle sales.

“Sure.” Clint shrugs. “How much is everything?”

“I don’t know, whatever. Haggle, I don’t care.”

“He can have my water,” Jeanie offers, and holds a mostly full water bottle out to Bucky.

Bucky snatches it out of her hand and helps Steve to his feet.

Clint thanks her while Bucky and drags Steve to the diner where it’s air-conditioned and he can force a balanced meal and some Gatorade into Steve while he yells at him, quiet and intense.

He makes Steve eat, slowly so he doesn’t get sick, and repeats, worried, “You have to take care of yourself better than this, Stevie.”

“I know, Buck, I know. I just got busy, I forgot. Plus I knew we’d be at the market today, and I was going to find us some kettle corn, and you know how we both always eat too much of that. I just got a little lightheaded is all, calm down.”

“Calm down,” Bucky repeats. “You turned red and then green like it was fuckin’ Christmas on your face. You almost passed out and you weigh about ninety pounds right now. But yeah. Maybe I should just calm down.”

“Bucky - “

“Eat your damn potatoes, Steve.”

“Gotta say, I’m not really liking this role reversal thing so much.”

“This isn’t fun times, Steve.”

“I am well aware of that, Bucky.”

“Are you now.”

“Bucky, I’m fine, I’m _fine_ , really.”

“Eat your damn potatoes, Steve.”

***

They’ll all be heading back into the city tomorrow afternoon, but for now they’re still at Stark’s lake house for Steve’s birthday. Steve passed right the fuck out after getting spectacularly laid, if Bucky says so himself, and he does, because it was easily among the top five times between the two of them. Sex is always good with Steve, but damn, this time it was beyond phenomenal.

Bucky still can’t sleep though, had slipped out of bed and out to the dock to smoke. It’s a quiet night, the air cool and still. he hears crickets and the gentle sounds of the waves and the sounds of Stark and Bruce giggling from inside the house. Steve’s distinctive gait comes closer behind him, and he quirks his lips when Steve takes a long, deep, noisy breath in through his nose.

“That you?” Steve asks.

He shakes his head, the pot smell responsible for the intermittent giggling in the distance either dissipating in the night air, or he’s grown so used to it it isn’t registering anymore. Maybe both.

“Think it was Tony and Bruce,” Bucky says, waving his cigarette absently in the air. “This is just the regular stuff.”

Steve nods, and sits down. Bucky pulls his arm back, ready for the weight of Steve’s head to butt against his chest, burrow in a little bit and demand some of his warmth. Steve surprises him by lying down on his side, pillowing his head in Bucky’s lap against his belly and letting his hand trail down into the lake water.

“What are you doing up?” Bucky asks him, looking down at Steve’s closed eyes.

“Missed you,” Steve says simply.

“Nah, that’s not it. You just wanted another round,” Bucky teases, flicking his cigarette accurately across the deck into a planter.

Steve laughs quietly, “Happy birthday to me,” he sings, softly and completely out of tune. “Is it out of the question?” he asks, rolling over to kiss at Bucky’s belly through his t-shirt.  

“Never,” Bucky says, leaning back onto his elbows.

Steve’s fingers are wet from the lake, but Bucky barely even notices as Steve kneels up and straddles Bucky’s thighs. They make out for a little while on the dock, just kissing and touching, not really trying to get anywhere until Steve’s goosebumps are more from a chill and less from what Bucky’s doing to his nipples.

“Let’s take this inside,” Bucky tells him, bracing his hands on Steve’s hips until he regains his balance. It’s cute when Steve offers his hand to help Bucky up as if he’s really going to be able to help, but Bucky just smiles and takes it anyway.

Bruce and Tony are still sitting on the deck outside Tony’s room, if the cloud of smoke around them is anything to go by they’re having a grand old time. Their voices drift softly into the night. Bruce is trying to explain something, but Tony’s giggling far more than he’s listening. Bucky slows a little to listen and Steve runs into his back.

“You want to see if we can join them?” Steve asks. “Tony stopped asking me, but he’s always willing to share.”

“What? No,” Bucky says, heading on inside to their dark room. “The last thing I need is paranoia and the munchies.”

Steve smiles, and pushes Bucky back, climbing - literally climbing - onto the ridiculously high bed. “I hate this bed, I can’t find you.”

“I’m the size of this bed, how can you not find me,” Bucky says, reaching out blindly and grabbing Steve’s knobby knee.

“You are not, shut up.” Steve drops himself right onto Bucky’s lap again.

“So, wait, you’ve never smoked?”

Now that his eyes have adjusted to the lack of light, Bucky watches as Steve levels a supremely unimpressed look at him. “You have heard me attempt to breathe on a regular day, right? I should make my lungs work harder?”

“Point,” Bucky says, sliding his hands up and down Steve’s scrawny thighs. Bucky wants to see his name tattooed right there, right above where the V of his thumb and fingers rests when he holds Steve’s thighs like this. All that unmarked skill there for Bucky to touch. “Ever eaten it? Special brownies?”

“Once, at a party in college. I didn’t know, actually, I just wanted a brownie.”

Bucky laughs.

“There were some things I was a little unprepared for in the big bad world of fraternity parties,” Steve admits, grinding back a little. “I cornered Peggy and made her listen to a lecture on the history of sailor tattoos. She said it was only twenty minutes before I passed out, but I’m pretty sure I was talking for about seven hours.”

“Sounds about right,” Bucky says.

***

When they get back to the city, there’s only about two weeks until the Epic Road Trip From Hell. Steve and Clint are nothing but excited, but Bucky and Coulson are a little more reserved. Bucky’s seen firsthand how tension can build in  tight quarters. Even though Clint and Coulson are their closest friends, he’s a little apprehensive. This could go very well, but road trips have a lot of potential for going very, very badly.

Steve and Coulson are busy with preparations, Steve setting his itinerary with Natasha and Peggy, because not only is he moderating some kind of panel and hosting a shading clinic where he’s finally going to finish Bucky’s back piece, he’s also doing a bunch of interviews and meeting with a production company that’s gotten farther than any of the others in talking about a reality show set in the shop.

Coulson’s rationalizing the trip as an opportunity to expand the Midwestern presence of the label, and he’s been in meetings with bands across the country to see if he’ll be able to hit a show and see them live.

Leaving Bucky and Clint with too much free time on their hands. Coulson tries to keep Clint from causing too much trouble by assigning him the task of planning their trip, and quickly ropes Bucky in as well when he sees the evil glint in Clint’s eye.

“Damage control,” Coulson insists.

“We got this, Boss. We have so got this,” Clint insists, commandeering one of the shop’s computers and searching “world’s dumbest tourist traps” first thing.

"Damage control, " Bucky confirms. "On it."

“No, no, no, no,” Clint mutters, scrolling down the page.

“Wait, why no to this one?” Bucky asks, flicking a link on the screen with his index finger.

“Iowa,” Clint says, in a tone that brooks no further discussion.

"This is primarily a business trip, Clint, " Coulson reminds him, handing him a list of cities and venues he's hoping to check out.

“You’re no fun.”

“I beg to differ.”

“It’s no fun when you beg,” Clint pouts.

***

Clint checks the itinerary and looks back at the screen. He does this a couple of times before surprising Bucky by asking, "Your sister lives in Montana, right?”

“Amy? Yeah, she’s in Billings with my mom. Why?”

“If we catch that band Coulson wants to check out at UND, we’ve got some cushion here.” Clint points to the computer screen between North Dakota and Montana on I-94. “Do you think she’d want to see you if we stop for a day or so?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah, that’d be great. I’ll check, see if it’ll work.”

Bucky and Amelia don't talk as often as he'd like; the hours he keeps and the time difference get in the way. She’s busy with her internship and she’s self-involved in that unintentional way she has, the baby of the family. She’s never outright said it, but Bucky’s pretty sure she’s also still really mad at him for abandoning her when he joined the army, since of course he didn’t tell her why he left. Even though their mom was doing well by then, even though he wouldn’t have left her in an unstable environment, Bucky’s her big brother, was the only real parent she knew for a long time.

They call each other about once a week, but usually they miss each other and just leave those generic family voice mails: “Hey, everything’s fine. I was just calling to check in. Hope you’re doing well; give me a call when you get a chance.”

It’s only about once a month or so that they actually talk. She updates him about her job: ‘It’s so freaking kick-ass, Buck, you don’t even know!” and he tells her whatever strongly edited and kid-safe story he’s got for her. She’s nineteen, but she’s still his baby sister and she will never not be a gap-toothed ten year old to him.

They usually end the call after that, and Bucky smiles and pulls Steve into a rough hug. Every once in a while, she gets worked up about something. Bucky just stares into the middle distance and lets her have her say. Sometimes when she hangs up, Bucky goes up to the roof and doesn’t come down for a long time.

Once, Steve went looking for him and found him at Josephina’s. He was playing with Fabiana, making choo-choo noises with her little train set and watching her giggle and clap. Steve drank hot chocolate in the kitchen with Jo, while she not-too-subtly and not-too-quietly grilled him on his and Bucky’s child-having plans in broken English.

After about an hour, Fabi cranky and tired, he pushed himself up off the floor and airplaned her back to her mother. He and Steve went home and quietly crawled into bed in the middle of the afternoon.

Steve curled up behind him, pressed his forehead between Bucky’s shoulder blades before pushing himself a little higher on the bed to wrap around Bucky until dinnertime.  

Bucky ends up talking to his mom on the phone before he reaches his sister, and lets her know they’ll be headed out that way in a couple weeks. She’s excited, talking about what they can do, making a grocery list, making plans and Bucky puts the phone on speaker for about fifteen minutes until she remembers that he’s there.

He reminds her that he'll only be there overnight, and reminds her that Steve will be with him.

Bucky’s mom is aware of the fact that Bucky likes boys, too. He told her when he was in school, because there was this kid he was kinda into and thinking about maybe sorta asking if he wanted to maybe kinda do something some time maybe. But the kid moved before he ever got around to doing more than like hang around with him at lunch a couple times.

He told his mom and she was supportive in the sense that she ruffled his hair and said she loves him, of course she loves him, “don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart!” and gave him a loud, lipsticky kiss on the cheek.

He knew she thought it was a phase that he’d grow out of. He’d never had a lot of close boy friends and she figured it’s easy to mistake friendship for love when you’re young and not used to it. He overheard her talking to her girlfriends about it, and he'd been equally embarrassed and angry, though he knew she didn't mean to be dismissive.

“It’s not like he ever acts like those people,” she said. “I’ve never caught him wearing my dresses or playing with dolls when his sister isn’t around, so I’m sure he’ll grow out of it. He’s just confused right now.”

She's got a good heart, and Bucky's always been a little too willing to make excuses for the people he loves.

That was the end of it, though, because Bucky dated girls and he went to prom with a girl and he went off into the Army (so obviously he’d grown out of that whole liking boys thing) and there was no more talk about boys when he’d call home. Mostly because Bucky wasn’t going to tell his mother about the anonymous blow jobs he gets when he sneaks out to gay bars or the one-night stands he has or pretty much anything at all about his sex life because that’s his _mom_ , ew.

When he met Steve, though, he told her about him pretty much right away. She was still calling him often, but at least it was down to once or maybe twice a week instead of every other day at that point. Even so he was still only able to get about three minutes into a phone call before, “Are you sure you don’t need me to come out there?”

“No, mom, really, I’m doing fine, it’s good,” he’d said, because between the physio and the army and the fucking paperwork, the last thing he wanted was his mother flitting around in his space, hovering, trying to take care of him.

“But, hey, I’m glad you called. I wanted to tell you. There’s kind of this guy,” he’d started, intending to just kind of mention Steve, warm her up to the idea just in case it worked out.

But he told her pretty much all about him, a little hesitantly at first, because he knew she accepted this all when it was theoretical, but it’s different, knowing and _knowing_. But she just asked if he’s happy and if he thinks this Steve person will make him happy and since the answer is yes, she’d been fine.

A couple of times when she called to talk to Bucky and Steve answered the phone instead, Steve spent a few minutes making awkward chit-chat and trying to find a place in her rapid and rambling chatter to hand the phone over. She’s always very nice, but Steve’s never quite sure what to talk to her about, finding Bucky and pointing to the phone and looking at him with wide eyes. Bucky grins and does absolutely nothing to help him out.  

***

The Pittsburgh stop is a bust. The club is terrible, cramped and crowded and not in a punk club way, in a shoddy fake way that even Bucky could sense was more about profits than aesthetics. The band was nothing more than a glorified Pixies knock-off. The one highlight of the night was when Bucky headed to the bar to get the next round and made that comment to Steve.

Steve lit up, dragged Bucky outside so Bucky could smoke and listed all the ways Frank Black had influenced music as a whole.

When Bucky flicked the butt away and took a long drink, draining the rest of his bottle, Steve trailed off, watching closely.  

When they finally call it a night, Clint and Coulson drive them back to the hotel and say their goodnights. Steve keeps running his hands under Bucky’s shirt, pulling it up and squeezing, pushing into Bucky’s stomach and pulling back from kissing him to watch where he let go. His fingers zero in on one specific spot, pushing Bucky onto the bed. He follows his fingers with his tongue. Bucky bends sideways a little, trying to see what has Steve so fascinated.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I grew a little faster than I could keep up with.” Bucky looks away, reaches over to turn the lamp off.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes into his neck. “Hey! Where’d the light go? Was looking.”

Bucky hates his stretch marks. He hates all his scars, except the ones Steve made awesome. He especially avoids looking at his stretch marks running across his sides - the ones Steve’s so interested in right now - because those are scars he inflicted on himself. He can’t even blame anyone else like the ones on his arm or the bullet graze on his calf or even the scar shaped like a seven on his knee that he got when Jasmine Fletcher “accidentally” pushed him off the jungle gym in first grade.

Steve, though. Steve runs his fingers along them. Steve can’t stop staring at them. He tells Bucky how fucking sexy he is, and Bucky can’t help it. “Are you for real right now?”

“What?” Steve pulls back, waits for Bucky to wiggle around and get comfortable before climbing on top of him, sitting back on his thighs and rubbing his hands up and down Bucky’s sides. “This isn’t new.”

“Even that, though?” Bucky asks, pressing Steve’s hand down into his side, covering the stretch marks.

Steve nods. “Yeah, of course.” He sits up, ghosting his hands over the swell of Bucky’s belly. “Should we have a safe word?” he asks him, out of nowhere.

“What?” Bucky blinks.

“For when you’re eating.” Steve’s watching his stomach where he’s still rubbing circles, but it looks like it’s just a convenient place to rest his eyes.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s one of those kinds of things with us.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Steve lies back down, next to Bucky on his side. He strokes slowly back and forth along the underside of Bucky’s stomach, soft and quiet.

***

Clint scheduled this leg of their trip specially for Coulson, but he was being super secretive about it. Bucky asked if Clint wanted to drop him and Steve off somewhere and maybe have some alone time, but Clint just laughed and dragged Bucky out to the car.

“No way. Steve wants to do this, too. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Bucky thought for sure that meant they were going to hit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Clint takes a completely different exit and heads west instead of continuing north. He catches Clint’s eye in the rear view mirror, but Clint just smiles and shakes his head slightly.

"You'll see," he sing-songs out.

They end up at a drive-it-yourself tour of filming sights from _The Shawshank Redemption_. Steve’s incredibly excited, but Coulson is downright giddy.

"It's one of my favorite films," Coulson says.

" _Films_." Clint rolls his eyes fondly.

When they’re done, phones full of souvenir photos, they pick up drive-thru burgers on the very quick “speed limit, sweet boy” drive back to the hotel.

Clint asks, "What’s your favorite movie, Bucky?”

"I don’t have favorites," Bucky complains. “But hey, Steve, what was that one you dragged me to last year, remember? The theater across from the jerk chicken joint?  That was pretty good.”

Steve frowns. “That piece of shit? That’s your fav - oh." Bucky watches the blush form, starting at the tips of Steve’s ears, dusting across his cheeks.

“Yeah. Pretty good movie. Clint?”

Clint likes the Nolan Batman films, but he also loves any and every adaptation of Robin Hood.

“Right, the archery.” Steve nods.

“Glad you approve,” Clint snarks back.

“What’s yours, Steve?” Coulson interjects, squeezing slightly on Clint’s neck.

“Hmm. Oh! I’ll show you at the hotel, Buck. You’ll love it.”

"Oh, no." Coulson says. 

"What?"

"You'll see," Clint grins wolfishly.

About two hours after they check in, Bucky’s “What the fuck? Steve! What the _fuck_?” can probably be heard across the entire hotel.

***

Depeche Mode is on the radio and Coulson is muttering to himself about the detours Clint packed into the early stages of the trip. He keeps seeing a billboard for something called The Creation Museum.

"Coulson -"

“No.”

“But -”

“No.”

“Sir -”

“No.”

“We’re already driving about five hours out of the way so you can see some cartoon building, Clint,” Steve says.

“Okay, first of all, fuck you,” Clint says.

“Language.”

“Second of all,” Clint continues, “it is the _Hall of Justice_ and it is awesome. Third of all, it is an hour and a half out of the way, tops. We don’t have to be in Indy until ten. Your hot date is sitting right next to you, Steve. It’s not like you have anywhere else to be today.”

“He’s got a point,” Bucky says, pulling Steve closer for a little backseat makeout.

“And fourth of all, what the hell kind of art student are you? It’s a museum, it’s a classic deco building. I’ve seen you jizz all over the Chrysler building.”

“Clint! Enough.”

Clint crosses his arms, facing forward in the front seat.

***

They have a nice afternoon at the museum, and Steve apologizes to Clint, because it really is a beautiful building. But after another mediocre show, Clint admits that he forgot to make hotel reservations. He also forgot that there was a Nascar race at the Indianapolis Speedway that week, and that might make it slightly difficult to get a hotel room on no notice.

“Sorry, Sir,” Clint whispers, looking miserable, as they all pile into the single room with two double beds.

“It’s all right, Clint,” Coulson says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

They’re bunked down for the night, quiet and calm except for the intermittent rustle of sheets. Another whisper, a soft grunt and then.

 _Giggles_.

“Really, guys? Really?” Coulson’s exasperated voice comes out of the darkness.

“Sorry!” Steve laughs. Bucky pulls his arm back from turning the light on, folds it under his head where he’s lounging, carefree, with a shit-eating grin on his face. Steve’s got both feet planted on the wall and he’s pushing his shoulder into Bucky’s side.

“He won’t roll over!” Steve laughs.

"You said you could make me. So make me."

"Shut. Up," Clint groans.

“Children,” Coulson sighs, exasperated. “Go to sleep.”

Steve and Bucky are ridiculous cuddlers, and everyone who's ever met them knows it. When it’s just the two of them at the diner, they sit across from each other, Bucky with his feet up on the bench seat next to Steve.

But if anyone else is with them, it’s usually Steve against the wall and Bucky on the outside with his arm around Steve’s shoulders. Coulson’s watched Bucky wait for Steve to stop talking to the group and slide into the booth before sitting more than once, as if he’s trying to keep him safe from the world. By the end of the night, Steve usually turns so his back’s against the wall and his legs are across Bucky’s lap. Bucky absently rubs Steve’s ankle when they’re like that, and before long, especially if Steve’s maybe a little buzzed still, he’ll end up with his head on Bucky’s shoulder and his hands under Bucky’s shirt, rubbing at his belly.

That’s Bucky’s cue to take Steve home pronto.

They walk around the neighborhood holding hands, and Steve’s what Clint’s always referred to as a double-clutcher: he laces his fingers with Bucky’s, but then as soon as they stop walking to look at something or talk to someone, he’s got his other hand wrapped around Bucky’s wrist, too. Bucky learned how to do a lot of things one-handed when he hurt his arm, so most of the time he doesn’t even notice.

When they’re at a show, if they’re not in the pit it’s usually Bucky behind Steve, one hand on Steve’s hip and the other holding a beer while Steve leans back into him. Sometimes, it’s Steve in back, with his forehead pressed into the meaty part of Bucky’s shoulder and his hands tucked into Bucky’s front pockets.

When they’re at home on the sofa, Bucky usually sits like a grown up, and Steve gets huffy because he can’t lay with his head in Bucky’s lap and draw at the same time. He actually gets legitimately mad about it. It’s equally annoying and sweet and it drives Bucky nuts, because “fuck, just go draw, Steve, I ain’t goin nowhere.” Steve likes to sit on the other end of the sofa and wedge his ice-toes under Bucky’s ass, because, well, ice-toes.

In bed, they sleep like they’re on a romance novel cover. It's too practiced and natural not to be habit. Coulson wakes up to use the restroom in the middle of the night and ends up just staring for a full minute on his way back to bed because he didn’t know unconscious people could actually sleep that wrapped up in someone else.

They’re _holding hands_.

Neither he nor Clint mind cuddling before bed, but when it’s time to actually sleep, they tend to separate. Also, Clint _kicks_.

***

Steve and Clint are napping in the backseat. Bucky and Coulson spent a while in companionable silence, but about twenty minutes ago Coulson said, quietly, “Did I ever tell you about the first time I met Steve in a non-professional capacity?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, but please do.”

Clint convinced Coulson to take him out dancing. Clint will take any excuse to drag (“heh, get it, Sir?”) Coulson out to a real life gay bar, and he likes to take Steve, because he sincerely flirts with old drag queens who adore him and buy him pink drinks with umbrellas until he can’t stand.

It usually takes about three.

Clint and Coulson hadn’t been together long, maybe six weeks or so, and Coulson knew Steve from work, but they hadn’t socialized before. He’s been amazing to work with on the couple of commissions the label has used him for, and Clint clearly thinks the sun shines out of Steve’s ass. Clint’s spent the entire night, “Steve did this, isn’t it great?” and “Steve said that, he’s so funny!” and “Steve Steve Steve.”

“I was so jealous,” Coulson laughs, slowing down to the speed limit to pass another radar gun.  “Clint and Steve make a striking pair, and you have to remember Clint was still wearing eyeliner on a regular basis. And Steve was nothing but manners and eyes.”

Bucky laughs, can picture it. “I don’t know if I could have resisted the two of them together,” he admits.

“Oh, I was halfway to convinced they’d end up in bed together. They clearly already had. The only question was whether or not I’d be invited.”

“Jesus, could you imagine?” Bucky laughs.

After about a minute, Coulson states, dryly, “I’m going to ask you to stop picturing my boy naked now.”

And Bucky laughs again. “You started it.”

***

They’re about an hour inside North Dakota, mellow classic rock on playing softly while Clint takes a shift at the wheel when Bucky startles Steve awake from nowhere, “Wait. When the fuck did you sleep with Clint?”

Clint jerks the wheel but corrects quickly. “Oh, fuck.”

“Find an exit, sweet boy.”

“We had a thing. In college,” Steve says softly, waving his hand dismissively.

“A thing,” Bucky says flatly.

“It was casual,” Clint says, hopefully.

Steve nods. “Casual. Hand and mouth stuff.”

“Oh, that’s not going to help,” Clint mutters from the driver’s seat, speeding around a couple cars to find an exit.

“Oh, just hand and mouth stuff. That makes it better. No reason you should have maybe mentioned that to me at some point in the last two years! How many of our friends fucked you, Steve?”

“I never fucked him!” Clint insists.

“None,” Steve bites out. “If you’re going to be like this, if you really want to get technical about it, only you have that honor.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Coulson says.

“But wait.” Bucky’s clenching his hands in the way Steve’s come to learn means they’re shaking. “You said. I distinctly remember you said it had been a while.”

“It had,” Steve says quietly.

“Yeah, I’d call twenty-four years a while!” Bucky shouts.

“It wasn’t twenty-four years. It was like. Eight months.” Steve huffs out a breath and crosses his arms defensively. “It’s not like I’d never had anything in my ass before, Bucky.”

“Just not a penis,” Clint mutters.

“Oh, look, what a conveniently timed gas station," Coulson says. "Please pull over, Clint.”

Clint takes the exit faster than is prudent and rolls the stop sign to pull into the lot. He parks and climbs out of the car, Coulson dragging him across to the end of the parking lot. The ice in the cooler outside is, apparently, fascinating.

Bucky also leaves the car, slamming the door behind him. “Fuck it, I need a smoke.” Bucky steps inside the store, buys a couple of Cokes and a pack of cigarettes. Then he has to go back into the store to buy a lighter. When he comes back out, Steve’s standing there, hunched in on himself. Bucky hands him one of the Cokes, drops the cellophane wrapper into the trash, and jerks his head toward the opposite end of the parking lot.

“Explain this to me.”

“Bucky,” Steve whines.

“I really need to know how in two years it’s never come up that that night was your first time.”

“It wasn’t.”

Bucky takes five quick steps away, then rounds on Steve. “You know what I mean.”

“What do you want me to say, Buck?”

“I don’t know.” Bucky exhales a long stream of smoke and sits on the curb. “Sit.”

Steve sits. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Great.”

“No, I mean, with you it was a big deal, that’s why we did it, but not having done it before wasn’t a big deal.”

“Why hadn’t you done it?” Bucky asks. “You. Look, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you got around a bit. Before me. You’ve told me that.”

Steve shrugs. “I just hadn’t done it yet.”

“How is that possible?”

Steve looks at the ground, picks at the label on his Coke bottle. “You know what I’m like, Bucky.”

Bucky knows what he thinks Steve is like, but Steve sometimes looks at the world strangely. It’s great, it makes him amazing to be around, but it’s usually wiser to ask than assume in case he and Steve aren’t even in the same book, let alone on the same page. “What are you like, Steve?”

“Fussy? Particular? Demanding? Bossy?”

“True.”

“Okay, and. You know. The kinds of guys I like.” Steve waves a hand at Bucky, apparently indicating Bucky’s build.

Bucky nods.

“Right. And, usually, guys like that, who want guys like me” - Steve waves at himself - “they’re good with me wanting to take it, which we were usually in agreement on. But they weren’t so keen on me, you know, directing things. The way I want.”

“Assholes.”

Steve shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

Steve shrugs again. “People like what they like, I guess. And I was kinda worried. I didn’t have to take gym class, but I had to go to gym class. I still heard locker room talk. It was supposed to be, like, the most painful thing ever. I’d already been through a lot of painful stuff. I certainly wasn't about to put myself through that for some jerk I barely liked. Not when blow jobs feel really good. And the longer I didn’t do it, the more apprehensive I got. So the more I wanted to be …”

“In charge?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve breathes, relieved. “And maybe I got a little dickish.”

“No,” Bucky drawls, voice full of faux incredulity.

“Shut up. So the length of a hand job or a blow job was about all anyone could put up with me for. And at that point, you know, everyone got what they came for, so there wasn’t much of a reason to hang around after.”

Bucky snorts. It had taken forever to break Steve of that particular bad habit.

“Right.” Steve bumps him with his shoulder. “I’d done everything else.”

“You should have told me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like I should have been aware.”

“Virginity is just a societal conce-“

“Steve, I swear to God.”

‘Well, it is.” Steve rolls his eyes. “What difference would it have made?”

“I could have tried to make it a little more special.”

“It was special, though.”

Bucky makes a disbelieving sound.

“It was. You were all. Patient. And, like, sweet. Jesus, Bucky, don’t make me talk about it.”

“So when Darcy said the thing about taking it slow … “

Steve nods. “She didn’t know. About me. I don’t think. But, Bucky, you have to understand, I was so into you, and that hadn’t really worked out so well for me before. And you seemed to like putting up with me. So I figured, you know, if anyone was going to do me right, it was going to be you.”

“That is the most fucked-up sweet thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Steve smiles at him, that little quirk of his lips. “I wasn’t wrong.”

Bucky throws his arm across Steve’s shoulders and pulls him close. “You’re kinda messed up, Stevie.”

“You love me.”

“God help us all.”

***

Bucky’s hands are shaking again. It’s been a stressful couple of days. This will be the first time he’s seen his mom and sister since he left the hospital. They’d known he was hurt, but he was with it enough to downplay it and make sure they didn’t find out how bad it really had been. A lot of what happened was classified, and he couldn’t tell them much anyway. By the time he was back stateside, he was not well exactly, but recovered enough that he didn’t need them to come out. They’d just gotten settled in Billings with Amy’s internship program, and he didn’t want to uproot them at that point. The program was highly competitive; he couldn’t let her lose her spot. All the work he did was already for nothing; he didn’t want it to be meaningless, too.

They’ve talked, obviously, and they know he was hurt and they know he’s gained weight. Mom sent sweatshirts from Amelia's company for Christmas so he gave her his and Steve's sizes, and she called back to triple-check.

“Yes, Mom, I said a two-X. Yes, double extra large. No, I’m pretty sure I won’t be swimming in it. I told you, I’m not working out like I did when I was - Yes, I’m taking care of myself. Yes, the VA doctors say I’m healthy as a horse. Yes, I saw the special on TV about the VA. No, my doctors are really good. Yes, you can talk to Steve.”

Steve had stared at him, wide-eyed, and waved his arms in front of himself, mouthing, “no, _no_ , what the hell, Bucky” before he took the phone and turned on all of his considerable charm.

But he hasn’t _seen_ them yet. So they don’t _know_.

“Bucky?” Steve asks. “You okay? We don’t have to go right now. We can stop and. I don’t. We can get some fries or something. If you’re not ready.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m good.”

Steve takes his hand and starts massaging little circles into his palms. “You sure?”

Bucky nods and takes a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”

Clint and Coulson drop them off, having begged off to stay in a hotel. Bucky had insisted there was room and they could stay with them.

Coulson politely declined, “No, really, this is for you and Steve. We don’t want to impose.”

They were all set to do the politeness dance until Clint interrupted with a firm, "Bad things are going to happen if someone doesn't tie me up and beat me in about fifteen minutes."

Bucky blinked at Coulson until his brain reset. "Right, so we'll meet you at the Motel 6 at four tomorrow, then?"

***

“Bucky!” Amy squeals, launching herself off out the front door and into a bear hug.

“Hi, Amy.”

Steve’s standing slightly behind him, awkward and nervous when Bucky introduces him.

“Amy, this is Steve. Steve, Amy.”

“Wow, you’re short,” Amy says. Her hand flies to her mouth. “I mean, I’m sorry, you sound so much. I mean, you don’t sound like that at all.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says with a half-smile. “I know.”

“His voice, though, right?” Bucky says, pulling Steve forward with an arm around his shoulders.

Bucky’s mom appears in the doorway behind Amy. “Come in, come in,” she calls, waving them inside. “Are you hungry? Tired? Thirsty?” She hugs Bucky and then pulls Steve into a hug, too.

Steve stands awkwardly, unsure where to put his hands.

“No, Mom. We’re good, we’re fine.” Bucky lets her herd them over to the couch to sit, dropping their bag at the bottom of the stairs.

She asks about the trip and Bucky tells her a censored version, hitting the highlights, making her and Amy laugh. He puts his arm around Steve, who relaxes slightly, but doesn’t curl into him the way he normally would.

When the girls leave the room to start dinner, Steve offers to help.

“Are you any better in the kitchen than Bucky?” Amy asks. “Oh, wait,” she interrupts. “You must be.” She smiles, but it looks a little cruel.

Bucky smiles. “I told you, I’ve always been useless in the kitchen.”

Steve’s not really sure how to come back from that one. He’s pretty sure that’s not what Amy meant. He’s rescued by Mrs. Barnes telling him to sit, “Guests don’t cook. James _definitely_ doesn’t cook.”

Steve sits back down next to Bucky. He leans forward and picks a book up off the end table.

“Look what I found.” He holds it out to Bucky.

Bucky doesn’t recognize the title, but the cover art is very familiar. “Coulson’s book?”

“That means there are at least three people in this house - “

“Shut up, Steve,” Bucky throws himself across the sofa to cover Steve’s mouth. “That is my mother and my baby sister you are talking about and neither one of them knows what any kind of sex is.”

“Oh, it’s not just _any kind_ of sex, Bucky,” Steve carries on, words muffled behind Bucky’s hand.

“Steve,” Bucky warns. “No one living in this house has ever had sex.”

“Kinky werewolf sex,” Steve laughs, words still muffled by Bucky’s hand.

“You will never have sex again if you don’t shut. Up.” Bucky looms over him, pinning him down into the corner of the couch.

“Boys?” Mrs Barnes calls from the kitchen. The door between the two rooms swings open and Steve rights himself immediately. He probably made the whole scene looks far less innocent than it really was, but he’s committed now. Getting caught by nuns is one thing, this is his boyfriend’s _mother_.

“You’ll be in Amelia’s room, and she and I will share mine tonight. James, why don’t you put your things away.” She pushes back through the door, calling, “It’s just casserole, is that okay?”

“That’s fine, Mom,” Bucky calls, levering himself off the sofa. He lowers his voice. “Mom’s not what you’d call a cook, either. Guess it’s genetic. But casserole is usually a safe bet.”

Steve stands to help Bucky settle their things in Amy’s room, but Bucky pushes him back down.

“Sit, I’ll be right back.”

Steve sits, puts the book back where he found it. Now that it’s quiet, he can just hear Bucky’s mom talking to Amy in the kitchen. “Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?” He calls.

“No, Steve, not a thing,” Amy calls.

Mrs Barnes’s voice carries out to him, muffled but still distinguishable enough for Steve to hear her saying something about “just a phase. There are lasers now, the holes will heal.”

Steve shakes his head. These people don’t know Bucky at all any more.

Casserole is not a safe bet.

At least, Steve thinks the charred, smoking hunk of whatever that was supposed to be that Mrs Barnes pulls from the oven was supposed the be a casserole.

“Oops,” she says with a nervous little laugh. “Well, Steve, you can cook, can’t you?”

“Um,” Steve says.

“No, honey, no, I’m kidding.” she pats his shoulder. “You’re one of the arty ones. James has told me. We’ll get pizza.”

Steve looks over at Bucky for confirmation that he really just heard that, but Bucky’s watching his mom, not making eye contact with Steve.

“Salad for me,” Amy says. “Bucky?”

“Hmm? Supreme? Steve?”

“Sure, that’s fine,” he says. But Amy’s giving him that look again.

Mrs Barnes brings out photo albums, and tells all sorts of embarrassing stories about Bucky. “It’s still the same, right? This is what I did when he brought home girls.”

“Yes, Mom, jeez,” Amy sighs. “It’s exactly the same.”

“Well, it’s not _exactly_ the same.” She says.

Bucky reaches for his third slice of pizza.

“Jeez, Bucky, do you know how many calories are in that?”

“About two hundred sixty,” Bucky says.

Steve interrupts Amy by asking another question about biofuels. She seems a little put off by the question, until Bucky jumps in and asks about it, too, and then she’s off, impossible to stop until both Steve and Bucky are yawning, unable to keep their eyes open.

***

In the morning, Bucky’s willing the coffee maker to just come on already. He didn't sleep at all,  even as exhausted as he was, between Steve’s snoring and Amy’s silent disapproval ringing in his ears. He didn’t miss that, but he didn’t want to ruin the evening by fighting. Before there’s even a cup’s worth of coffee in the carafe, the back door opens, letting Amy in, back from her sunrise yoga class.

“Good morning!” She chirps, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. “Where’s _Steve_?”

And the way she says Steve’s name, like a curse, Bucky can’t do this.

“Amy.”

“Bucky.” She mirrors his tone, mocking, reaching around him for an apple

“What, exactly, is your problem with Steve? Is it - is it the guy thing?”

“Bucky!”

“Shh! Everyone else is still asleep!” he hisses. “So is it?”

“No! Of course not!”

“Then what? Steve’s great, you know. Or you would, if you’d give him a chance.“

“Sure, he seems very nice,” she says, crunching into her apple.

“Then why have you been like this?”

“I don’t like what he’s done to you,” Amy mumbles. “You deserve better.”

“What? Better?”

"I know you like him and all, but this can’t be good for you. I just want you to be healthy. And if he really loved you, he’d want that too."

Bucky’s having a hard time breathing as Amy continues, “I just don’t understand how you let this happen. Unless,” she gasps, covers her mouth. “Oh, Bucky, was it your injury? Because you said you were better. There are exercises, and meal plans. I know it’s hard after an injury. There’s a woman in my yoga class who sprained her ankle and gained twenty pounds. But you can get back to where you were."

“I am better," he says, but his voice comes out strangled.

“Then it’s just a matter of hard work!” Amy smiles, looking self-satisfied.

“I don’t want that anymore, Amy.”

‘Why, because _Steve_ doesn’t like it?”

“I’m. He’s. You can’t.” Bucky’s focused on his breathing, trying to reign in his anger, his hurt, so he’s unaware of Steve approaching until he feels his cold, narrow fingers on the back of his neck.

He jumps up, the chair skidding across the linoleum. Steve takes a step back while Amy makes a loud, startled sound.

“Buck?” he asks, softly. “You’re okay. You’re safe and I’m right here, okay?”

“What was th -”

“Shut up,” Steve interrupts Amy, harshly. “Not now. Bucky?”

“Yeah. I’m good. I’m fine.”

“You are,” Steve confirms.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Bucky says, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath in through his nose. 

Steve looks at him for a long minute. “Okay. Okay, I’ll be up in a few minutes. I’ll bring your coffee.”

Bucky nods and escapes.

“What did you do to him?” Amy hisses.

“I was about to ask you the same thing. He hasn’t had a panic attack like that in a while. What did you say?” Steve’s calm, speaking softly and deliberately.

“I was just asking about his diet and exercise plan. It’s obvious whatever you’re doing to him -”

“You’re going to want to stop talking now,” Steve says, sitting down across from Amy. “And listen.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she shoots back.

Steve rolls his eyes. “I know that you’re coming from a place of love, and I respect that. But what you’re doing? You don’t get to do that. No one gets to do that to him.”

"But his cholesterol -”

"Is fine."

"His blood pressure - "

"Is better than mine!"

“But - "

"Look, Amy. I get it, I do. I worry about him too. You have no idea. But I didn’t do this to him. He looked like that when I met him. And he is healthy. Even if you won’t believe that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means normal, healthy people don’t know how many calories are in a piece of pizza off the top of their heads!"

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“It was. He damn near lost his arm and he reevaluated his priorities and that’s his decision. And he’s doing well now.”

“Thanks, Doctor Steve,” she sneers.

Steve sighs. “I’m not a doctor, but I studied basic anatomy. I sleep with that arm around me every night. It _was_ that bad.”

“No, he said -”

“He lied!”

There are tears in Amy’s eyes, and her lip is trembling, but she’s not crying. “Why?”

Steve shrugs. “Same reason he’s ever done anything. To take care of you. Besides, he ran a half marathon last month with our friend Sam and he finished ahead of half the field of skinny dudes, so just back off, okay? He’s fuc- He’s healthy."

Amy nods, sniffling.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’m going to go check on him now, and when we come back down, we’ll have breakfast and forget the last half hour ever happened.”

***

Bucky’s still a little self-conscious sometimes; he sees the way people look at him and Steve. He’s heard more than one stranger at the club wonder how he hasn’t crushed Steve in his sleep by now. Hell, he’s wondered it himself from time to time, when he lets himself press Steve down into the mattress with all his weight the way Steve wants, and he feels it when Steve struggle to pull a full breath into his lungs under him. But it’s different when it’s family.

And Amy wasn’t wrong. All it would have taken was had work to get back where he was. He just didn’t want to.

He never considered it ‘comfort-eating.’ It was always there’s only a little left so he might as well finish it when he was little. Or using up the leftovers so they wouldn’t go bad when he got a little older. Or carbo-loading before a game in high school.

Then, when he was getting ready to ship out and in the army, it was all about regulating everything until the bi-monthly cheat days. Bucky wasn’t ashamed of it, exactly, but it wasn’t something he wanted anyone else to really be around for.

Because he knew he should only eat one cookie. Maybe two.

That would satisfy any real craving, and he’d be able to go on about his day. But he had to buy the whole pack and if the pack was there he was going to eat the pack. And once the whole fucking pack of cookies was gone, he might as well go ahead and eat the donuts, too. Because it’s cheat day. He can’t have donuts in the house in the morning, the temptation would throw him off, so he has to get rid of them. He doesn’t want to throw them out, that’s wasteful. So he ate those.

And then it was just a race to cram everything he couldn’t have into one day before he was out of time.

It was always worse during football season, because cheat day was Sunday, and Gabe’s wife was a party planner, always trying out new ideas on them. So there was dip and chips and wings and burgers and dogs and little sandwiches and potato salad and all sorts of stuff when it was their turn to host. She thought he was charming, always willing to help clean up, but it was mostly so he had a good excuse to hang around the buffet table when it wasn’t halftime.

All the other guys just hosted at the bar, and it was round after round of wings and beers and more wings and more beer. Bucky made extra sure to flirt with the waitress so she’d come around and clear the table a little more often so no one could really tell how many of the wings he was eating.

Which would always make him feel bad and guilty because what a waste. All that food, just for him to gorge himself on. It wasn’t terribly expensive, nothing he couldn't afford, but it was still money. And since he already felt guilty about eating so much and wasting so much, he might as well go all out.

He actually has the healthiest relationship with food he’s ever had now, even though a lot of people - Amy - might have a hard time believing that. Because food isn’t a reward or a punishment for him now. Having a burger isn’t contingent upon running three miles or finishing 100 crunches. Having a burger is dinner, because burgers are good and that’s what he wanted. Running three miles is because he likes running with Sam and that’s what he wanted.

***

Bucky’s sitting in the tub with the shower on when Steve knocks on the door and comes in without waiting for a response.

“Hey, Bucky. I brought that coffee.”

“Thanks.” Bucky reaches for it.

“How about you turn the water off, then I give you caffiene.”

Bucky complies. “Amy still alive?”

“She loves you.”

“Yeah.”

“Want me to call Coulson?”

“No. Yes. I kind of do.”

“Okay,” Steve stands up to go find his phone.

“Does that make me terrible?”

“What?”

Bucky looks up at him, his wet hair falling limply into his eyes. “I never get to see them. And I just wanna go home.”

“Bucky, no.” Steve hugs him, ignoring the water soaking into his shirt. “I wanna go home, too.”

Coulson comes to pick them up, and lets Bucky blame him and his made-up ‘corporate emergency’ when he hugs Amy and his mom goodbye.

“Can we just not drive anywhere right now?” Bucky asks softly.

“We’ve still got the room,” Clint offers.

“Go there,” Steve says.

He leads Bucky into the room and spoons up behind him, carding his fingers through Bucky’s hair. He whispers nonsense into Bucky’s neck until he finally falls asleep.

Coulson pays for the room for an extra night.

***

Steve spends most of his time at the convention actually working, networking and performing those punk PR miracles he’s so good at. Bucky’s thankful surliness and antisocial behaviors are quality attributes for people like himself. He lets Pepper and Peggy handle his schmoozing.  

“Makes you more mysterious,” Clint says, slurping a frozen coffee concoction that Bucky’s pretty sure has no coffee in it whatsoever. It is delicious, though.

“Tortured,” Bucky says.

“Brooding,” Clint offers. “Until they see you gaze adoringly at the tiny little love of your life.”

“I don’t gaze,” Bucky says, finishing the last of his coffee thing and tossing the cup into the bin.   

Clint doesn’t even bother with a response. He does stop at a table and grab a couple of business cards for Natasha, some kind of piercing thing that Bucky’s not really paying attention to.

He checks back across the convention center floor. Seems Antoine’s finally shown up at Steve’s booth, and he’s not jealous, he’s not, but damn, that is one fine looking gentleman.

Hugging Steve.

Still hugging Steve.

“Fuck, he’s my Jeanie,” Bucky mutters.

“You found a genie?” Clint asks.

“What? No. That doesn’t even make sense. Where the hell would I find a genie?”

“Hey, you said it.”

“No, I said fucking Antoine is my Jeanie. From the grocery store.”

“Oh,” Clint says. “Oh, yeah. Tell her you’re not interested. In big boy words. Put her out of that misery.”

“She knows I’m not interested.”

“Hope springs eternal when you’ve got your first crush on a gay boy, Bucky.”

“I liked you better when you were a hyperactive man-child.”

“I have that effect on people.” Clint tosses his empty coffee cup over his shoulder and unerringly hits the trash can.

Bucky saunters over to Steve’s booth, squeezes in behind the table to wrap Steve up in a hug from behind. “Hey, babe,” he says, bending down to hook his chin over Steve’s shoulder. “Antoine.” He reaches his right hand around Steve’s waist to shake Antoine’s hand, firm, businesslike. Not at all in a pissing contest kind of way. Not at all.

“Subtle,” he hears Clint say, but no one else seems to notice.

“Bucky, hey.” Antoine turns that model-perfect smile on him. “Nice to see you. Steve said he was going to finish your back tomorrow. We’re really looking forward to that.”

“Right, yeah, he is.”

“We’re going to record it. If you’ll sign the releases, we’d like to put the video up on our site.”

Steve looks up at him. “We’re gonna make you a star!” he says dramatically.

***

“You nervous?” Steve asks him, pulling on the shirt Bucky wore all day to sleep in and dislodging his glasses. Every night, Bucky tells him: shirt, _then_ glasses. “You’ve been quiet.”

“No, it’s just my back. Linework’s already been done. Shading’s just annoying.”

“What’s on your mind, then?” Steve flops down on the bed, stretching his arms over his head.

Bucky sits next to his, stroking his hand all the way from Steve’s fingertips to his thigh. “You know the way the ink bottles looked on the display across from your booth?”

Steve nods, body arching like a cat’s.

“Thinking about what that looked like. Don’t know what to do with it yet, but I’m turning the visual over in my head. Something in glass maybe. There’s always broken bottles around.”

“Sounds good,” Steve says, rolling onto his side and tugging Bucky to lie down with him. “Pretty.” He starts kissing across Bucky’s shoulders, down his chest, pausing at Bucky’s nipple ring, tugging on it with his teeth.

“You had a good day, then?” Bucky says, scooting around to make himself more comfortable.

“‘Bout to have a better one,” Steve says. “That sounded less bad-porn-dialog in my head.”

“Well, you’re about to suck my dick, so you can sound as bad-porn as you want.”

Steve rubs the pads of his fingers over the red lines Bucky’s jeans left around his hips. “I like this,” Steve says.

“Proof that my pants are too tight?”

“Well.” Steve puts his glasses on the nightstand. “Yes.” he traces his tongue over the groves. “But I meant more the marks. They’re like tattoos. But they’re always new. Different.”

“I know something else you might like, then,” Bucky says, pulling Steve on top of him, forgetting about the blowjob in favor of getting inside Steve as soon as possible.

“What - what’s that?” Steve stutters, wrapping his hand around both of them and stroking, slowly.

“Those were the new pants. The bigger ones.”

***

Bucky is so fucking hard.

He’s trying not to be. He keeps telling himself that this is not the appropriate venue for this. He’d also fucked the hell out of Steve this morning. He really shouldn’t be this turned on.

It’s making it so much worse because he knows he can’t - he can’t do anything about it right now, there’s a dozen or so people watching Steve mark him, permanently make him his, and he has got to stop thinking about it.

“You need a break, Buck?” Steve whispers in his ear.

“Nope, I’m good,” Bucky says through clenched teeth.

“You’re lucky I know the difference between _in pain_ and _turned on_ ,” Steve’s grin is evident in his voice.

“That true for everyone, or just me?” Bucky asks, readjusting his body on the chair while Steve checks his work.

“Eh, it’s something you pick up on pretty quickly, in this line of work. You shoulda been there the first time I inked Clint.”

"Hey,” Bucky says, suddenly.

Steve sits back, wheels the stool forward to look at Bucky’s face.

“We’re not mic’d, right?”

Steve laughs. “No, they’re going to run audio over top. I’ll do that interview later today.” Steve sits back, re-inks and gets back to work. “But that doesn’t mean you should start talking to me about what you’ve got going on down there. I am being judged right now.”

“Don’t know how you can joke,” Bucky says, turning his head to rest his other cheek on his forearm. “Inspection always made me freak out. Even if I knew I was in fine shape, just being evaluated was enough to make me a sweaty mess.”

“This is what I’m good at. They can watch me all day.” Steve says. “Spine, now. Let me know if you need a break.”

“I’m good.”

“If they asked me to go to dinner, that’s when I’d be a sweaty mess,” Steve continues. “You did it right. You got me on my home turf.”

Bucky sucks a breath in.

“Sting, or what I said?”

“Sting.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Pretty sure _you_ got _me_ on your home turf. Using your cookies of seduction.”

“I wasn’t trying to seduce you.”

“Whatever,” Bucky says.

“No really. I wanted to say thank you. I didn’t think, well, I didn’t think I’d _need_ to seduce you. I just didn’t think you’d want anything after the seduction. There.” Steve sits back. “Now that is some damn fine shading.”

***

“It’s probably not my place,” Clint says, pulling up a chair next to Bucky. Clint flips it, straddles it like Bucky is. Clint has a hell of a lot more seat left behind him than Bucky does.

They’re poolside, and it’s about eleven at night, but it’s quiet and calm out here and Bucky had needed a minute away from Steve and his charm and his groupies. Steve has _groupies_ , what the fuck. “Coulson told me it wasn’t, so I know it’s definitely not my place. So don’t tell Coulson, and I’ll let you in on a little secret about Steve.”

“It’s not necessary,” Bucky starts.

“Yeah. I’m gonna tell you anyway.” Clint hands him a beer. “Steve’s never been good with people. He’s kind of a concept guy. Huge ideas, grand ideals. He expects too much and not enough of them at the same time.”

“Amen, brother.”

“About, hmm, a year, year and a half before you, Steve hit a bit of a rough patch. He dated this a string of assholes, for whatever value of dating Steve has. Had.” Clint waves his beer bottle in a lazy circle. “Whatever.”

Bucky has tried to take Steve out on dates a couple of times, like when they went to the movies, but Steve - Bucky sighs. Steve doesn’t get it, and it makes him tense and pissy, which is kind of the opposite effect he’s going for.

“Steve has never been much of a dater. He told me it was nonsensical to waste time and money getting these expected formalities out of the way before you could get down to what you actually expect to get out of the event, so why not skip the dumb stuff, make out, and then go back to your own lives a little more relaxed and full of post-orgasm endorphins? Made sense to me.” Clint grins at him.

“It’s not that Steve doesn’t want to do date things,” Bucky says. “He’s usually happy to do anything that I suggest. He just doesn’t get it, doesn’t really come up with a lot on his own. He’ll tell me what he’s planning to do, invite me to come along, but doesn’t really seem terribly invested in whether I’m interested in joining him.”

He tells Bucky that he doesn’t have to spend time or effort, whatever, wooing him. He lives with the guy, he loves him more than anything, he’s a sure thing. Bucky taking him to a nice dinner and a movie isn’t going to make him live with him any harder.

“Yeah, sounds like Steve. There was this one guy. We never were sure what Steve saw in him. Good looking, but not really Steve’s ... type.”

“Not a fat ass, you mean.”

“Bucky.”

“I mean that in a positive way.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Clint brushes him off. “But yes, okay. This guy was pretty slim, built.”

“Are you trying to help me here, or…?”

“Just listen. Steve pretty much caught on quick that he was trying to get in with us. He wanted his lameass band signed so he was always sniffing around me and Coulson. But somehow he got to Steve. Made him think he might have a chance, and Steve fell for it.”

“Seriously, how is this helping? Are you going to describe to me how Natasha viciously had the guy drawn and quartered? Because otherwise this is the worst story you’ve ever told me.”

“It didn’t get that far. Steve’s good, not stupid. But after that I think Steve swore off dating. We weren't really surprised it took you two so long to get together. Steve’s a hard little dude to convince of anything if he’s not already inclined to believing it.”

“I know.”

“Just. Don’t take his practicality as indifference. Because it’s not.”

***

The four of them are lounging in Steve and Bucky’s room, each couple on one of the double beds. Bucky’s on his stomach, letting the new work on his back heal.

“I’m so ready to go home,” Steve says, curled up into Bucky’s side. “I know there are a lot of things to do on the drive back and we can take a lot of time if that’s what you want to do.”

“I vote home,” Clint mumbles from next to Coulson, who nods.

“Home by the weekend, then, if you want, babe.” Bucky scratches at Steve’s scalp.

“Vegas first,” Clint says. “Then home.”

“What’s with you and Vegas?” Steve asks.

“Never been.”

“Never?”

“Nope.” Clint says, raising his head a bit and settling it back down on Coulson’s thigh. “Want to see if I’m as good with dice as I am with a rifle.”

***

Clint is terrible at dice.

***

Bucky’s walking down the strip, hand in hand with Steve, when he stops to take a flyer from a flamboyantly dressed young man. “Whaddaya say, Stevie? You wanna get married by Elvis?”

‘What? No.”

“Is it the Elvis thing? Because they also have Dolly and, ooh! Aliens!”

“No, it’s not the - aliens? Really?” Steve leans in and Bucky nods, pointing to the neon pink flyer.

“It’s not Elvis. It’s just. You don’t want to get married in Vegas.”

“Course I do. Don’t you?”

“Well, I mean, married, sure, but.”

“You either do or you don’t.” Bucky’s still mostly teasing, but they’re both aware of the undercurrent of sincerity.

“Ok, one, that’s not true, and two, I do, I just.” Steve visibly casts around for a reason. “It won’t be legal.”

“So we make it legal back in New York when we get home. Let’s have Elvis marry us.”

Steve sighs and sits on the bus stop bench outside the little rainbow-painted chapel. “But if we do that, then to get out of it, we’d have to really undo it.” He scoots all the way over when Bucky sits next to him.

“Why would we want to get out of it?”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know. People do. What if you get sick of me?”

“What if you get sick of me?” Bucky counters.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Okay then.”

“No, but. I mean. On the scale of high maintenance, you and I are at opposite ends. I know how impossible I am.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“So what happens when that’s too much for you? What about when you realize Jeanie is more your thing? When you don’t want tattoos and piercings anymore. When you want to move out of the city? What about babies? Fabiana’s not going to cut it forever for you.”

“Steve, babe, calm down.” Bucky rubs Steve’s back through his hoodie. Steve is in Vegas in August and still wearing a hoodie.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

“No, Steve, I’m just saying. Breathe. You can freak out all you want as soon as you’re not turning purple, okay? In. Out. In, out. Breathe.”

“I can’t stay mad at you if you’re going to rationally try to save my life, you dick,’ Steve says.

“All part of my master plan. Just like ignoring the bullshit about Jeanie and reminding you that we’ve had the kid conversation.”

“I know you want to marry me, Bucky, but you don’t want to marry me.”

“And you’re going to explain that. because I most assuredly do want to marry you. And I also want to marry you.”

“Don’t you think the timing is a little suspect? Given the way we left your mom’s?”

“No. I think the timing is convenient.”

“Oh, well, allow me to rush right into this marriage because the timing is convenient.” Steve’s voice is tight.

“Rushing? It’s not rushing.”

“Really, because, ‘hey, let’s get married right fucking now’ is -”

“It doesn’t have to be right now!”

“What?”

“It doesn’t have to be right now. I just thought, hey, you’re here, I’m here, Elvis is here. But it doesn’t have to be right now. Tell me you at least think about it.”

“Of course, Bucky. I asked you about it. Last year, remember?”

“Right, which is why I was a little taken aback when you apparently changed your mind.”

“I didn’t change my mind!”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I want it to matter!”

“It. It would matter,” Bucky says softly. “It would matter. Steve, it would matter.”

“Then don’t make a joke out of it. If we’re going to do it, I want to do it for real.”

***

The closest Bucky ever gets to telling Steve about what actually happened to his arm is on the drive out of Vegas.

“I hate the fucking desert,” Clint spits. “Couldn’t we have gone home the way we came? Bucky?”

“I don’t mind it.”

“No … memories?” Steve asks.

“I’ve never been to a desert before,” Bucky says flatly. He knows where this is going but he can hope, he can hope.

"Afghanistan -”

Damn. “Yes, Steve, my Spanish is so good because I spent six years in Afghanistan.”

“I’m going to sleep,” Clint says. “Wake me up where there are trees again.”

“Clint,” Coulson says softly, but whatever comes next is drowned out by Steve’s question.

“Where were you then?”

“Officially, I was in Colombia.”

“Officially.”

Bucky nods. He’s pretty sure he was actually in Colombia. At least most of the time. “Officially there was a mechanical malfunction and then a landslide that complicated exfil and an untreated wound in that kind of environment faces, and unfortunately sometimes experiences, complications.” Bucky takes a deep breath.

“Hey, Clint. Wake up.” He kicks the back of Clint’s seat, casts around for the first thing that’ll change the subject. “What’s the deal with the dresses, man?”

“Nope. Sleeping. Ask me when there aren’t armadillos on the fucking side of the road.”

***

“My dad was a soldier, you know,” Steve says quietly that night in the not-quite-dark of their hotel room.

Bucky starts. He hadn’t been sure if Steve even knew his father, never mentioned him before. “Oh yeah?” he asks, just as softly.

“He, uh, he died before I was born.” Steve presses back into Bucky when his arms tighten around him. “My mom didn’t talk about him too often, but I asked when I was little and she told me that.”

By the time Bucky can think of what to say, Steve’s asleep.

***

“And I was like, yo, I’m a sub, not a masochist, you know?” Clint says as they’re driving down the highway.

“There’s a -”

“Yes, Steve, there’s a difference,” Clint sighs.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.

“You don’t have to talk about it, Clint.”

“No, I’m good, really.”

Coulson takes his hand off the wheel and squeezes Clint’s thigh. Clint leans over and rests his head on Coulson’s shoulder for a minute. “You sure, sweet boy?”

“Yes, Sir. Cop,” Clint points and Coulson double checks the speedometer. “I’m good. Don’t know what else there is to say on the subject, though.”

“How did you… Never mind,” Bucky trails off, takes his hand back from where Steve’s rubbing his fingers.

“No, what? We have a long-ass drive, might as well fill the time.”

Bucky really likes it when Steve holds him down, presses his wrists into the mattress like Bucky can’t just get right up if he wanted. And Steve has a thing for Bucky coming on him, especially on his face or his neck.

“How did you know? That you were … like that and not just into being told what to do?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Steve says.

“Yes it does,” Coulson, Clint, and Bucky all say at the same time.

"Oh, okay then," Steve says petulantly.

“When I was in the service, I dated this girl for a couple of weeks,” Bucky starts hesitantly. He’s pretty sure he was mostly with her because it was effortless and he wanted to get off, and since she was dating his abs more than his personality, it was a pretty even trade-off. "She was crazy hot, which was good because she was high maintenance as all hell and she liked to claim she had a dominant streak a mile wide. She didn’t, she was just bossy and a little mean.”

“I know how those go,” Clint says.

“She was also tiny and blonde, but it’s not like I have a type or anything.” Bucky jostles Steve a little.

Steve punches his shoulder. "I’m not tiny.”

“Steve.”

“I’m average height!”

“You’re like three feet tall!” Clint laughs.

“I’m five-four!”

“In your shoes!”

“Anyway,” Bucky says loudly. “She used to like to tie me up with these stupid scarves she had and leave little love bites all down my six-pack. Which was, you know, fine. I told you she was dating my abs.”

Steve makes a face.

“But she didn’t like me to talk when she did that.”

“But you’re so good at the talking parts!”

“I don’t think telling her that I had seven pancakes for breakfast would have had the same effect, babe.”

“Her loss,” Steve mumbles.

“Okay, but how did that make you feel?” Coulson asks.

“Who are you, Wilson?”

“You started it. How did it feel when you were tied up and instructed not to speak?”

Clint makes a happy little noise and wiggles in his seat.

Mostly he felt kind of bored and annoyed staring at her head and flexing his fingers so they wouldn’t go numb. “I didn’t feel like that, that’s for sure,” he says, waving his hand at Clint.

“That’s how you know you’re not like me,” Clint says after getting a nod from Coulson. "Also, for a gay dude, you sure dated a lot of chicks," Clint says.

Steve groans. "Labels, Clint? Again? Haven't we talked about this?"

"He called himself gay!"

Bucky presses his hand over Steve’s mouth. "Expediency. And I, like Steve, don't like labels."

When they stop at the hotel, Steve’s watching Bucky a little differently than he usually does.

“What?”

“Nothin,” Steve glances away, then back. He’s focused somewhere around Bucky’s thighs, not unusual … no. Not his thighs. His wrists.

“Oh. You enjoyed story time?”

“I don’t want to tie you up,” Steve hurries to tell him.

“You sure?”

“Um. No. But sometimes you put your hands under your head and leave them there. Like maybe it's something you want.”

“Maybe I just like letting you do all the work.” Bucky sits back on the bed, lies down with his arms behind his head like Steve said.

“Can you keep them there?” Steve asks, licking his lips and glancing away.

“Maybe,” Bucky says, drawing the word out. “You gonna just stand there and watch?”

Steve walks over to the bed. “Is this. Is this okay, though?”

Bucky lifts his head, moves his arms out to the sides and circles his wrists before putting them back where they were.

“But you like this?”

“Can’t think of anything I wouldn’t like with you.”

“Okay. And your back is okay?”

“Are you going to get up here and let me fuck you or what?”

“Bossy,” Steve smirks, finally getting his ass in gear. Challenges are always the best way to get him to do what he wants.

Steve strips, kneeling beside Bucky and licking a long stripe up his thigh, across his stomach. He reaches over, and Bucky shifts to help him.

“You said,” Steve nips at his side, ”that you were going to leave,” he nips again. “Them.” One more time. “There.”

Bucky stills.

“Better.” Steve reaches back, quickly getting himself ready, and sinks himself down on Bucky’s cock, his eyes fluttering closed.

Bucky grips his own hair, pulls a little to keep himself from reaching up, holding, touching like he wants to.

Steve grabs at Bucky’s wrists, pulls. “I need. Need your hands.” and Bucky’s grabbing him before he’s even done talking.

“Oh, better,” Steve gasps.

Bucky plants his feet, holds Steve by the hips and takes control. He feels Steve clench down around him when he comes, Steve’s grip on his wrists tightening as well, sending Bucky over the edge with him.

In the morning, Steve looks at him, glasses on and Bucky’s t-shirt hanging half off his shoulders. “I was thinking,”

“Uh oh.”

“Was going to say, when we get home. Let’s do it.”

“Let’s do it?” Bucky asks. “That’s how you’re going to propose? Let’s do it?”

“Worked last time.” Steve shrugs. “Wanna get married? For real, in New York, with our friends, by an actual licensed clergy member?”

“Is this like last time, where you’re asking me for future reference, or are you really asking me?”

“You want me to really ask you?” Steve climbs off the bed, pulls Bucky to sitting, and kneels down in front of him. “Will you marry me?”

“Yeah, fine,” Bucky sighs, “if I gotta.”

Steve tackles him down onto the bed. “I don’t know why I want to put up with you forever.”

“Too late now, third time’s the charm.”

***

Back in the car, the morning sun glaring in their faces, Coulson and Steve get into a heated debate over who the most musically talented band in history is. Coulson is adamant that Rush has to be at the top of that list. Steve agrees that Rush is great, especially when it comes to drumming, but the crown goes to Metallica.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bucky leans back away from Steve.

“No, it’s true,” Clint says.

“Coulson, did we ingest massive quantities of drugs when I wasn’t looking?”

“Oh,” Steve says, then folds his arms across his chest and sits back, looking smug.

“What?” Bucky asks.

“Oh,” Clint says, drawing out the sound and turning back around to face forward in the passenger seat.

“What?” Bucky insists, drawing the word out the same way Clint did.

“Bucky,” Coulson sighs, and affects a snooty tone. “Are you familiar with the earlier works in the oeuvre?”

“Like … The Black album?”

Steve and Clint both snort and Bucky cuffs Clint on the back of the head with one hand and pinches Steve’s arm with the the other.

“Ow!”

“Nice move,” Clint says, rubbing his head.

“Thank you.”

Steve’s ass is in Bucky’s face as he’s unplugging Clint’s ipod and plugging his own in, scrolling through the choices until a song comes on. “Okay, everyone shut up for the next forty-five minutes. Bucky, listen to this right here. I am about to blow your mind.”

Forty-five minutes later, Bucky says to Coulson, “Pretty sure that makes it three against one. Sorry.”

Steve and Clint high-five, and Coulson sighs. “It’s okay, Bucky. There’s a reason I saw them twenty-three times between 1984 and 1989.”

***

About an hour outside Chicago, Coulson puts on _Pretty Hate Machine_ and they damn near blow the speakers.

They surprise Steve by catching a Cardinals/Cubs game. Coulson and Clint are still trading stories of their personal most influential albums, and Steve’s surprisingly quiet. When Bucky looks over at him, he’s lost in the actual baseball of the baseball game, quietly but intensely critiquing the pitches.

Pretty much everything about Steve is sexy, even the annoying stuff, even his awful bony ass, and his sharp elbows, and his snoring. But he’s sexiest when he’s distracted by something, so he’s not worried about anything, he’s not trying to help or explain or rationalize or convince or protect or do or be anything.

When he’s at a show and he closes his eyes for a minute and he’s listening to the music with his full body, turned just a little toward the speakers, his mouth slightly open, his breathing syncing with the rhythm of the baseline. Or when he’s drawing and everything about him is tuned toward making the picture exist for everyone else to see. When he doesn’t notice Bucky watching him, and he just is for a minute. Like he is just now.

Bucky thinks baseball is utterly boring, so he watches Steve watch the game for two thirds of the inning. He’s expecting Steve to yell at the umpires when they call a ball on a strike that was so clearly a strike even Bucky could tell, but Steve just makes a face and takes another drink of his nine-dollar beer, then notices Bucky watching him and ducks his head sheepishly.

“Pitching?” Bucky asks.

“What?”

“Pitchers. You like watching the pitchers.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Steve says during a break in the ‘action.’ “When I was little” - Steve huffs when Bucky grins at him - “a little _kid_ , I wanted to be a pitcher.” Steve points to the baseball seam tattoos around his elbows. “What about you?”

“Didn’t want to be a pitcher,” Bucky scoffs. “Baseball team in school were the biggest dicks in the neighborhood.”

“Well yeah, to the football jocks,” Steve teases. “What did you want to be?”

Bucky thinks back. “I didn’t really think about it after like, second grade when people stop asking. I think when I was four I wanted to be a dinosaur.”

Steve laughs, his eyes drifting back to the field to make sure, whatever, the grass is still growing.

“But I didn’t really think too much about it. I just wanted to have money somehow and that was about all I thought about it.”

“So you didn’t run around as a little ten-year-old Bucky playing soldier, or anything?”

“Nope,” Bucky pops the ‘p’ on the end of the word and gestures back at the field where, “look, Steve, something appears to be happening!”

“Hey, no, is that. Did I say something wrong?” Steve turns in his chair toward Bucky, ignoring the game on the field.

“What? No.” Bucky points to the field again. “Look, he’s thinking about throwing the ball.”

“You don’t like to talk about it.” Steve presses.

“Sometimes it’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“So tell me.”

Bucky actually really liked the ‘being in the military’ part of being in the military. He was good at it, the guys were generally pretty decent, and it was easy to avoid the macho douche canoes for the most part. It got even easier after spec ops training, where the worst of the assholes usually washed out, and it was simply a given that they were bigger badder bamfs than anyone else in the room. Bucky doesn’t like posturing, but he’s damn good at it when he has to.

He really liked the stint for eight weeks on glorified guard duty at the embassy in Estonia, where this other unit shared duty with his guys, and they had this kid who could hack anything (not that his skills were needed, but they got first run movies to watch when they were off-duty) and this super quiet dude who could out shoot even Bucky. He’s pretty sure the guy - Al-something, Alvarez maybe? - could hold his own against Clint, and Clint’s the best marksman he’s ever seen.

It was boring as all hell, but no one shot at him the whole time and the nightlife was fun. The guys all got along really well, and one time he was giving a blowjob in an alley behind a club, and the kid and his sniper shadow stumbled back there too. Bucky thought he was busted for sure, since his dick’s new best friend was short but very obviously male.

But they were caught up in each other enough not to even notice Bucky or what he was up to.

Except the next morning, Alva-whoever nodded at him, gave him a sloppy little salute. Bucky nodded back, and that was that.  

It was the whole “go to this place because we said so and do this thing because we said so and by the way you can’t tell anyone you were here or what you did or why and if you get hurt we may or may not come find you eventually” part of his army experience he didn’t like. It was the part where his sister refused to speak to him for six months after he joined up that he didn’t like. It was the part where no one ever bothered to see if there was anything to do other than send in the guys with the big ass guns because they had big ass guns.

That part he didn’t like.

He didn’t keep up with anyone he knew then (there aren’t a lot of people left, really) but he’s thought about trying to find the hacker kid and Alv-whatever. Tony would get a kick out of them. Sam would probably know how to look for them.

If they’re still around.

“Look, Steve, I did a lot of good and I was good at what I did. I just don’t really want to dwell on the fact that what I was good at was killing people.”

Steve stares at his shoes for a few minutes. “So. Look, he’s about to throw the ball.” Steve takes his hand, interlaces their fingers and squeezes. He points with the other, explaining how he guesses what kind of pitch it will be by the pticher’s footing.

***

 

“Welcome back!” Maria calls as she walking into the shop about fifteen minutes before closing. They’re throwing a welcome home party at Stark’s Club, and she’s been designated to swing by and grab them from the shop after her shift to get the party started. To her surprise, though, Steve’s in the chair, his left arm extended and Pepper bent over him with the tattoo gun in her hand.

Bucky’s on the sofa, sprawled out and staring at his hand, too. It’s not unusual, but normally when he’s staring at his left hand, he’s scowling or swearing or both. This time the expression can only be called ... _dopey_.

“What did I miss?” Maria asks.

“Party’s not just a welcome-home shindig,” Clint says, hopping off the counter as Pepper leans back and Steve stands up.

“Yeah, it’s going to be, uh, it’s an engagement party.” Steve says, and shows her his new knuckle tattoo, til death in script down the side of his left ring finger.

*** *** *** 

**Author's Note:**

> Steve's favorite movie is Hard Core Logo.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://essieincinci.tumblr.com/), and there's visual inspiration for the verse [here](http://cpbvpicturebook.tumblr.com/)


End file.
